FROM FEYERABEND TO CRITICAL DESIGN PLURALISM PRINCIPLE: OPEN THE SCIENCES AND ALL NON- SCIENCES!

Year 2021, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 224 - 240, 30.10.2021

Cansu Karaman

Abstract

According to Feyerabend, science had a destructive role and became unquestionably hegemonic against religion, which had priorly an ideological dominance in the history of humanity until the 19th century. However, science would later take the same throne with its quasi-new role and had divided all non-scientific fields into dualities with the abstractions it created; namely as ‘subjective defects on the surface’ and ‘objective answers which can be interpreted as the real’. While the prevailing scientific methodology had precise responses and solutions to this duality, which also aimed to ‘reduce abundance’ in the world, Feyerabend, on the other hand, would suggest a counter-thesis concerning the relationship between what can be called as the ‘perceived’ and the ‘real’. As a result, Feyerabend aims to shake the fixity of this monist approach, which he refers as ‘the tyranny of science’ and he has further developed procedures with new speculative insights in favor of ‘the other non- scientific fields’ in order to reach the ‘projection of regaining abundance’ within the principle of pluralism. Feyerabend's ‘method as methodless’ approach with its specific emphasis on the idea of pluralism has gone beyond his philosophical investigations and reached to the various non-scientific fields, providing multiple links in establishing the aforementioned notion of ‘abundance’. This paper attempts to discuss the idea of ‘critical design’, which would constitute and understand the relationship between human and computer interactions as another powerful example of ‘anti-methodology’ by questioning, blurring, representing the designs it would create and carries the art beyond its ‘aesthetic-improvement’ levels. In this regard, this paper further claims that Feyerabend's notion of pluralism and the idea of critical design can be interpreted as complementary theoretical positions by being ‘destructive’ against any norm values and becoming ‘constructive’ for the formation of new paradigms. Finally, this study will contribute to the critical literature by arguing that the ‘project for the acquisition of abundance’, which can be developed with the cooperation of science and non-science, pinpoints the importance of this cooperation between the idea of critical design and Feyerabend’s method as anti- method.

Keywords

Feyerabend, pluralism, critical design, art and design, non-scientific

FEYERABEND’DEN ELEŞTİREL TASARIMA ÇOĞULCULUK İLKESİ: TÜM BİLİMLERİ VE BİLİM DIŞILARI AÇIN!

Abstract

Feyerabend’e göre bilim, dinin ideolojik hâkimiyeti elinde tuttuğu 19 yy.a kadar, hegemonya yıkıcı bir rolde olsa da, sonrasında aynı tahtı rol devriyle ele geçirmiştir. Bilim dışı kalan tüm alanları ise, kendi lehine yarattığı soyut ikiliklerle ‘yüzeyde görülen’ öznel kusurlar ve ‘gerçek olan’ nesnel cevaplar şeklinde ayrıştırmıştır. Hâkim bilimsel metodolojinin dünyadaki ‘bolluğu azaltan’ bu kesin ayrımına Feyerabend’in ürettiği karşı-yanıt ise 'bilimin tiranlığı' olarak adlandırdığı monist yaklaşımın sabitliğini, ‘öteki’ bilim dışı alanlar lehine ürettiği spekülatif sorularla sarsmak ve çoğulculuk ilkesiyle ‘bolluğu geri kazanma projesi’ne ulaştırmaya çalışmaktır. Feyerabend’in çoğulculuk çerçevesinde ortaya koyduğu ‘bolluğa’ ulaştıracak bu ‘yöntem dışı yöntem’ yaklaşımı, çeşitli bilim dışı alanlarla da bağlantılar kurmuştur. Makale kapsamında ele alınan ‘eleştirel tasarım’ düşüncesinin de, bu bağlantılardan birini insan-bilgisayar etkileşimleri bağlamında kuran; (sanatla ilişkilenen) tasarımı yarattığı sorgulama, bulanıklaştırma ve temsillerle ‘estetik geliştiricilik’ konumundan öteye taşıyan (anti)metodolojilerden biri olduğunu düşünüyorum. Bu doğrultuda, Feyerabend’in çoğulculuğu ve eleştirel tasarım düşüncesini, norm değerler için ‘yıkıcı’, yeni paradigmaların oluşumu için ise ‘yapıcı’ ortaklıklarıyla okuyor; bilim ve bilim dışıların iş birlikleriyle genişleyen ‘bolluğun kazanımı projesinin’ mümkünlüğünü bu ilişkilendirmeyle göstermeye çalışıyorum.

Keywords

Feyerabend, çoğulculuk, eleştirel tasarım, sanat ve tasarım, bilim dışı

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