Science and design: Identical twins?

Per Galle, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design, Philip
de Langes All
e 10, DK-1435 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Peter Kroes, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Technology, Policy and
Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, Nl-2628 BX Delft,
The Netherlands

Recently, Robert Farrell and Cliff Hooker opposed the conventional view that
‘design and science are distinct types of intellectual study and production’,
claiming that science and design ‘are not different in kind’, and explicitly
challenging proponents of the conventional view to ‘provide explicit arguments’
in its defence. This calls for an in-depth conceptual clarification of the
scienceedesign relationship. The aims of the present paper are to take up the
gauntlet thrown by Farrell and Hooker, and in so doing, to provide such a
clarification. We first analyse Farrell & Hooker’s arguments, explaining why we
find them unconvincing. We then propose a plausible conception of design versus
science, and offer several arguments for considering design and science distinct,
albeit related, concepts.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: artefact, design methodology, design theory, epistemology,

philosophy of design

I
t is a commonplace human experience that much self-insight is to be
gained by comparing ourselves to others that we come to know well e
in particular if they are older and more experienced (parents, older sib-
lings, inspiring teachers, senior colleagues, helpful neighbours, etc.). Likewise,
as denizens of the academic community of design and design research, we
may have a good deal to learn by understanding in what ways our own young
discipline is similar to related but more established disciplines, or di/ers
from them. Art is one case in point. Science another. Here we focus on the
latter.

So, we might wonder, what is the relationship between design and science, and
what can we gain from studying it? Both are forms of intelligent human action
of an explorative, problem-solving kind, and as such appear to have much in
common. All the same, a successful designer would not necessarily make a
good scientist, and vice versa; so it would seem that design and science are
different in some respects after all. But for a clear understanding of the rela-
Corresponding author:
tionship between design and science such vaguely conflicting intuitions will
Per Galle
[email protected] not do. Therefore, in this paper we critically examine our conceptions of design
per.galle.web@gmail. and science, and reflect on whether or how we can draw a clear distinction be-
com tween the two. Arguably, this may facilitate students, practitioners and
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 researchers of design in drawing on whatever they deem design-relevant of the
considerable body of knowledge and understanding of science that already ex-
ists. (For example, there is a well-established philosophy of science, which
might inform the philosophy of design, which is only just emerging.) In the
long run, as our own discipline and its philosophy gain momentum, a more
symmetrical relation of exchange might evolve e much like, over the years,
sons and daughters tend to come on an equal footing with their parents.

In the design-theoretical literature it has been taken more or less for granted
that design and science are significantly different. In Simon’s classic The Sci-
ences of the Artificial, which is frequently cited even today, he contends that
‘[t]he natural sciences are concerned with how things are. [.] Design, on the
other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artefacts
to attain goals’ (1996 [1969], p. 114). Buchanan, a prominent contemporary
design theorist, once suggested that ‘scientists are concerned with understand-
ing the universal properties of what is, while designers are concerned with
conceiving and planning a particular that does not yet exist’ (1992, p. 17, n.
42). But even before Simon wrote his landmark book and Buchanan drew
his line between what is and what is not, Skolimowski (1966) had made a
similar statement, though restricting himself to engineering design (‘technol-
ogy’): ‘[i]n science we investigate the reality that is given; in technology we
create a reality according to our designs’ (p. 374). He even condensed this
into an elegant dictum: ‘science concerns itself with what is, technology with
what is to be’ (p. 375).

Rather than taking this conventional scienceedesign distinction for granted,

Heylighen, Cavallin, and Bianchin (2009) develop an elaborate argument for
it ‘from a conceptual and psychological point of view’ (op. cit. p. 94), drawing
on Searle’s notion of ‘direction of fit’ from his philosophy of language, and
particularly his philosophy of mind. As they put it, ‘the mental activities of
a scientist are characterized by a mind-to-world direction of fit’ (their beliefs
must be true, i.e. their mind must ‘match the world’; p. 97). ‘In contrast, a de-
signer’s mental activities seem to be dominated by a world-to-mind direction
of fit’ (such activities not aiming at truth, but rather at ‘what should be’, i.e.
at making the world fit the mind; p. 98).

However, in a recent paper, Farrell and Hooker (2012) oppose the conven-
tional view that ‘design and science are distinct types of intellectual study
and production’ (p. 481). Based on a sustained analysis of what they see
as the core ideas of ‘the dominant paradigm in design and design methodol-
ogy’ (p. 484), they reach the remarkable conclusion that ‘design and science
[.] are most accurately represented, cognitively, as design processes’, and
that therefore, ‘they are not different in kind’ (p. 494).1 It is an undeniable
merit of Farrell & Hooker to have so boldly challenged received wisdom
about the scienceedesign relationship. But not only do they challenge the

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 conventional view on the scienceedesign relationship, they also explicitly
throw a gauntlet at its proponents, inviting them ‘to provide explicit argu-
ments’ in its defence (p. 493). A specific aim of this paper is to take up that
gauntlet.

We are not thereby aspiring to settle once and for all the question of whether
or not science and design are ‘different in kind’ e as if that were an issue
involving only matters of fact. What is a matter of fact, however, is that there
are people who call themselves ‘designers’ and there are others who call them-
selves ‘scientists’. Each group of people practices an intellectually demanding
profession and may, we assume, benefit from a deeper understanding of what
it is doing as compared to what the other group is doing. Furthermore, we
believe that a thorough conceptual analysis of design as compared to science,
may contribute to the foundations of design research. Therefore, more gener-
ally we aim at a clarification of the relationship between science and design in
terms of the differences that set them apart, while acknowledging whatever sig-
nificant similarities they may have. We intend our analysis to cover design
broadly, ranging from the artistic to the technical design disciplines. Similarly,
science is taken to comprise academic research in general, not only (as the
word ‘science’ might suggest) the disciplines concerned with the study of nat-
ural or technical phenomena.

To achieve these aims, we first summarize in greater detail Farrell & Hooker’s
challenge and state the basic assumptions under which we shall address it (sec-
tion one). Next, we critically review their main line of reasoning, and explain
why it fails to convince us that ‘design and science are not different in kind’
(section two). The rest of the paper is more constructive in nature: we ‘provide
explicit arguments’ in response to Farrell & Hooker’s challenge, highlighting
in what significant ways science and design differ, and why science e pace Far-
rell & Hooker e is not to be thought of as a kind of design (section three).
Finally (in section four), we round off the paper by summarizing the overall
picture of the scienceedesign relationship that has emerged from the preceding
discussions.

1 Challenge and initial assumptions

The point of departure for Farrell & Hooker’s analysis is what they dub ‘The
Simon-Kroes model of technical artifacts’ (p. 481, emphasis added). Simon
(1996 [1969], pp. 6, 10) conceived of an artefact in terms of a goal (purpose),
the inner environment (physical structure of the artefact), and an outer environ-
ment (the surroundings) in which the artefact is supposed to achieve the goal
by virtue of its inner environment, the structure. On Simon’s view, design (or
‘the sciences of the artificial’ in his terminology), is (are) concerned with
shaping the interface between inner and outer environment, ‘attaining goals
by adapting the former to the latter’ (Simon, op. cit. p. 113). Rather than
goal, and the inner and outer environment, Kroes (2002, pp. 294e295)

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 suggested we speak of function, physical structure, and context of human action,
respectively. (A sundial, for example, has the function of keeping time, a phys-
ical structure involving a stick casting a shadow, and is used in the context of
human action of ordering events; op. cit. p. 295, Figure 3.) An artefact cannot
have a goal, but it can have a function. More importantly, the modification
clearly brings out an idea that was only implicitly present in Simon: the dual
nature of artefacts. On the one hand a technical artefact is a physical object
and can be understood as such by studying its physical structure. On the other
hand it is an intentional object in that it fulfils its function in its context of hu-
man action. Bringing this duality into focus is important, because ‘we cannot
make sense of technical artefacts without taking into consideration their phys-
ical structure, but also not without their context of intentional human action’
(p. 296). To understand the relation between the intentional and the physical
aspect of artefacts is essential to understanding design and design methodol-
ogy, but it is to some extent still an open question how designers are able to
bridge the gap between a functional description of an artefact (to be employed
in a given context of human action) and the structural description that is a
prerequisite for producing such an artefact (op. cit. pp. 298 f.; see also
(Kroes, 2012)).

According to Farrell and Hooker (2012, p. 484), it is ‘this SimoneKroes model

of the nature of technical artefacts that lies at the core of the dominant para-
digm in design and design methodology’, and they proceed to show that if this
model is accepted, then one also has to accept that the products of science
(‘those things that scientists produce’) are just as much ‘technical artefacts’
as are the products of design; hence that an argument for the conventional
distinction between science and design cannot be based on a premise to the ef-
fect that the two disciplines produce fundamentally different things. Rather,
they develop a conception of design so broad as to subsume science: ‘both
of them are most accurately represented, cognitively, as design processes’ (as
quoted above). And this is what brings them to their final conclusion: ‘both
design and science use design processes and reasoning strategies to produce
artificial objects, therefore, they are not different in kind’ (p. 494, emphasis
added). For convenience of exposition, we shall refer to their claim that science
and design ‘are not different in kind’ (or, as they put it on p. 487, ‘the conclu-
sion that science and design are not in principle distinct’) as Farrell & Hooker’s
thesis of unification.

In alignment with this unconventional view, Farrell & Hooker challenge ‘those
who still want to distinguish design and science’ to ‘show a plausible concep-
tion [of design] that does not include science’ (p. 490).2 In their concluding sec-
tion, they repeat the challenge in the form of a dilemma (p. 493):

‘Modern defenders of the SimoneKroes model of technical artifacts will

either have to accept the consequences that we have drawn out from the

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 model [i.e., that theories etc. produced by science are just as much (tech-
nical) artefacts in the sense of the model as are the products of design in
general], or they will have to provide explicit arguments as to why the
cognitive processes of science and design are not equally best characterised
as design processes.’

We, for our part, do not see ourselves here as defenders (modern or other-
wise) of the SimoneKroes model, and we have no qualms accepting the
consequence that Farrell & Hooker draw from that model: that the products
of science are artefacts; e.g. ‘theories set out in journal articles’ (op. cit. p.
484). Yet we are not convinced that Farrell & Hooker’s analysis of the model,
and the arguments they offer, justify their much more far-reaching conclu-
sion, the unification thesis that design and science ‘are not different in
kind’. So if, in the face of the above dilemma, we were forced to choose be-
tween either acknowledging science as a special case of design (‘not different
in kind’ from it), or providing ‘explicit arguments’ to the contrary, we would
opt for the latter without hesitation.

Even though our mission is not to defend the SimoneKroes model (and conse-
quently we may not be in the intended target group of Farrell & Hooker’s chal-
lenging dilemma), we must admit our allegiance with ‘those who still want to
distinguish design and science’. And to atone for whatever habitual thinking
on our part this confession may imply e and more importantly, to clarify
the distinction at issue e we will indeed attempt to ‘show a plausible concep-
tion [of design] that does not include science’, and in so doing, ‘provide explicit
arguments’ for it, thus after all taking up the gauntlet thrown by Farrell and
Hooker. Not because we have any particular wish to prove them wrong, or
to defend the conventional view at all costs, but rather to examine and criti-
cally compare various arguments in favour of the two opposed positions,
and to bring to light the conceptions of science and design on which such ar-
guments must inevitably rest.

However, before we embark on this endeavour, let us briefly state some basic
assumptions and observations from which we shall proceed:

1.1 On abstractness and artefacts

Farrell and Hooker (2012, p. 485) ask ‘what good reason is there to exclude
abstract things from being artifacts?’, implying that there are none. If ‘ab-
stract’ were taken to mean ‘nonspatiotemporal’, i.e., existing outside time
and space (Lowe, 1995, p. 513 f.), or ‘causally inefficacious’, i.e., failing to pro-
duce the desired effect (Rosen, 2012, Section 3.2), then presumably abstract
things would be either eternal and immutable, or useless by definition, respec-
tively, which seems a fairly good reason within the present context for
excluding them from being artefacts. But there are other definitions of ‘ab-
stract’, and it is not our intention to quibble about this point.

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 We will simply grant Farrell & Hooker that artefacts can indeed be abstract e
or at the very least non-material. Thus, for the purposes of the present discus-
sion, artefacts may be material entities such as shoes and fuel pumps and din-
ner plates; but (following Buchanan (1998), Buchanan (2001), Buchanan
(2004), and Krippendorff (2007)) may also be non-material (and arguably ab-
stract) entities, such as services, interfaces, organizations, scientific theories,
and software. We see no reason for restricting the scope of our discussion to
technical artefacts either, as did Kroes (who was writing in a context of engi-
neering design).

1.2 On artificiality and artefacts

Throughout their paper, Farrell & Hooker keep returning to the notion of ar-
tificiality and artefacts, and the pros and cons of distinguishing science from
design in terms of artificiality of their products, or even artificiality of science
and design themselves. We have no substantial objections to Farrell & Hooker’s
use of the notions of (technical) artefact and the artificial per se. However, two
remarks are in order here, to make our view on the matter clear from the outset.

First, Farrell & Hooker state that, on the assumption of the Simon-Kroes
model, ‘all the sciences also produce artificial things’ (p. 481). Whether that
is indeed the case depends on how the notion of artificial things (artefacts) is
interpreted. If an artefact is a human-made physical object that performs its
function on the basis of its physical structure, then there is reason to question
this claim. Natural history is a branch of science, but did it produce artefacts in
this sense? If the notion of artefact is taken to include (abstract) symbolic ar-
tefacts that fulfil cognitive functions, then it seems safe to claim that all sci-
ences produce such artefacts; in that case, also the classification schemes of
natural history are artefacts. We concur with Farrell & Hooker in that broader
conception of artefacts.

Second, following Simon, Farrell & Hooker use at least two different notions
of artefact (artificial). On the one hand, artefacts (artificial things) are taken to
be whatever is ‘synthesized [.] by man’ (p. 481), or ‘constructed by human be-
ings’ (p. 484); on the other hand artefacts are also conceived of as ‘meeting
points’ between inner and outer environments (pp. 482, 486, 487). For Simon
this means that the human organism becomes ‘the very prototype of the arti-
ficial’ (p. 489). Farrell & Hooker reject this idea if it is meant as a fundamental
distinction between the natural and the artificial. But they follow Simon in this
claim if ‘artificial’ is construed ‘as a convenient short-hand for the great variety
of natural adaptive behaviour’ (p. 489). From this they conclude that all intel-
ligent adaptive behaviour is artificial, including science and design. But why is
a great variety of natural adaptive behaviour artificial? And if our general ca-
pacity for intelligent adaptive behaviour is the result of our evolutionary past,
i.e. of our natural evolution (as Farrell & Hooker seem to contend a few lines
further on), why then is it artificial? Surely it is not artificial in the sense that it

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 is synthesized by man or human-made. e Here two different distinctions be-
tween the natural and the artificial are run together, which makes it difficult
to understand what Farrell & Hooker mean when, for instance, they write
‘.if all intelligent adaptive behaviour is artificial, then both design and science
are artificial because they are both examples of the process of, and the product
of, intelligent adaptive behaviour’ (p. 489). It is not clear to us whether this im-
plies that the products of science and design are artificial in the sense of ‘syn-
thesized by man’.

To avoid any such ambiguity about artificiality in our discussion of Farrell &
Hooker’s thesis of unification, we will be using the notion of artefact as defined
by Hilpinen: ‘An artifact may be defined as an object that has been intention-
ally made or produced for a certain purpose’ (2011). On our interpretation,
such artefacts may include non-material entities, such as pieces of music and
organizations, but not mental states, such as ideas (more on this in Section
3.2). This comes close to but is more precise than Simon’s idea of artificial
things as synthesized by humans.

1.3 On design and science as kinds of action

In order to be clear about what is at issue in the following it is important to
distinguish carefully between science and design as socially institutionalized
disciplines and scientists and designers as socially institutionalized practitioners
(professionals) of those disciplines on the one hand, and science and design as
kinds of intelligent human actions and the products that are the outcome of
those actions on the other. There is no one-to-one correspondence between
these two: scientists and designers as practitioners of these socially institution-
alized disciplines may perform either kind of intelligent human action and may
make use of the outcomes of those actions. For the present purposes, we think
of design (designers) and science (scientists) not as social phenomena but as
kinds of intelligent action (agents performing these kinds of intelligent action).3
This means that somebody who performs an action that is an instance of the
kind of intelligent action called ‘science’ is by definition a scientist, and the
same applies mutatis mutandis for a designer. It also means that when somebody
performs actions of both kinds (s)he is acting as a scientist and as a designer (see
the caveat on the co-occurrence of design and science below).

So, when Farrell & Hooker occasionally speak of design and science as ‘disci-
plines’ (pp. 480, 489), we take it to mean kinds of intelligent action, and these
kinds of action, and their products, are what this paper is about; not their
concomitant social phenomena. Indeed, we wholeheartedly agree with Farrell
& Hooker when they say that ‘both design and science are manifestations of
the general human capacity for intelligent action’ (op. cit. p. 487; emphasis added).
What separates our view from theirs is that we see design and science as kinds of
intelligent action that differ in important ways, as we shall argue in Section 3.
Whereas Farrell & Hooker look at science and design primarily from a cognitive

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 perspective, and appear to assume that design just as science is primarily a kind of
cognitive action, we will argue that design is not primarily a kind of cognitive ac-
tion, although design, qua intelligent action, does involve cognitive action.

1.4 A caveat on co-occurrence of design and science

In debating whether or not design and science are of the same nature, it is impor-
tant to note that specific instances of the action kinds we call ‘design’ and ‘sci-
ence’ often co-occur. But that does not entail that they, nor the kinds of
which they are instances, are similar in nature. Specific acts of, say, talking
and listening often co-occur, as do acts of cooking and washing hands, of giving
and taking. Yet no one would claim for that reason that talking is a kind of
listening, that washing hands is a kind of cooking, or that taking is a kind of giv-
ing. There may be good reasons for claiming that two kinds of action are similar,
or that one is a special case of the other, but co-occurrence is not one of them.

Even if the occurrence of one kind of action is conditional on the occurrence of

another kind, it does not follow that the two kinds of action are the same. For
example, consider experimental research to detect elementary particles:
CERN’s recent experiments to detect the Higgs boson are a major project of
science if ever there was one. Higgs bosons cannot be observed without appro-
priate measurement equipment and since these bosons do not occur naturally
on Earth they have to be ‘produced’. For those reasons CERN’s experiments
involve the massive design of (measurement) equipment. From this it does not
follow that there is no difference between performing the experiments (doing
scientific research) and designing and making the necessary equipment. So,
let us not be confused by the fact that sometimes or perhaps always instances
of science and design co-occur.4

Now the question may be raised whether there are ‘pure’ forms of science and
design, with no co-occurrence of the other kind of action. The observation and
reporting of a remarkable fact, for instance of a solar eclipse, may come closest
to a ‘designless’ form of science (albeit primitive); no artefact is made, except
the observation report itself, and that hardly involves design. Conversely,
designing a new piece of clothing may be done without performing any inter-
esting form of scientific research or producing any interesting scientific results.

Clearly, however, in modern day scientific and (technical) design practice, sci-
ence and design go hand in hand. In what follows, we shall assume that these
mixed forms of science and design can be understood to a large extent as the
co-occurrence of two different kinds of action, one known as science, the other
as design.

2 A critique of Farrell & Hooker’s thesis of unification

In arguing for their unification thesis, Farrell & Hooker use two kinds of ar-
guments. There are negative arguments by which they reject potential reasons

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 for distinguishing science from design. And there are positive arguments by
which they seek to convince us that certain similarities between science and
design are strong enough to justify their conceptual unification. Below, we re-
view these two groups of arguments, though not all of them in detail. Rather
we will discuss what we consider representative examples in sufficient detail to
explain why we are not persuaded by either kind of argument that Farrell &
Hooker’s unification thesis is tenable.

2.1 Negative arguments e against distinguishing science and

design
Having reviewed the ‘Simon-Kroes model of technical artefacts’, Farrell &
Hooker move on to present their negative arguments (op. cit. Section 2).
The most prominent of these consists of the rejection of a traditional argument
why design and science are different. This distinction argument focuses on the
kind of outcome produced by design and science and may be summarized as
shown in Table 1, in which we inserted literal quotations from Farrell &
Hooker’s own summary of the distinction argument (pp. 480 f.).

However, the disciplines (kinds of intelligent action) under scrutiny are science
and design, and since we can safely assume that both are disciplines of ‘intel-
lectual study and production’, there is no need to add that qualification in the
conclusion, or anywhere else in the argument. As for the second premise, Far-
rell & Hooker themselves use the phrase ‘metaphysically distinct types of
things’ (p. 481) as a stylistic variant of the phrase ‘different metaphysical
things’. We consider this variant to convey the same meaning as the phrase
in Table 1, but since the variant phrase is more precise, we shall adopt it.
Thus we arrive at the revised formulation of the distinction argument shown
in Table 2, which we will take as a point of departure for our critique of Farrell
& Hooker’s negative arguments. The reformulation is for initial clarification
only; it does not in itself constitute a critique of anything that Farrell & Hook-
er say.

Table 1 The traditional distinction argumenta summarized and rejected by F & H on pp. 480 f

Claim Claim (literal quotation from Farrell & Hooker) Justification

no.

1 If disciplines produce different metaphysical thingsb then the intellectual Premise

study and production of those things will be significantly different
2 Design and science produce different metaphysical things Premise (false, F & H argue)
3 Design and science are distinct types of intellectual study and From claims 1 and 2
production
a
We use ‘the traditional distinction argument’ as a name, because Farrell & Hooker present it as an example of what in
their abstract they call ‘a long tradition of arguing that design and science are importantly different’.
b
Summarizing their discussion on page 494 of their paper, Farrell & Hooker repeat the argument using ‘objects’ instead
of ‘things’. Apparently they do not ascribe any difference in meaning to this variation; neither do we. (On use of ‘meta-
physical’, see note in Table 2.)

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Table 2 Edited version of the traditional distinction argument opposed by F & H

Claim Claim Justification

no.

1 If two disciplines produce metaphysicallya distinct types of things then Premise

those disciplines are significantly different
2 Design and science produce metaphysically distinct types of things Premise
3 Design and science are significantly different From claims 1 and 2
a
In this context, ‘metaphysically’ can be read as ‘fundamentally’, or ‘ontologically’. Ontology is the study or theory of
being and fundamental categories of what is (e.g., abstract and concrete entities, events etc.). Metaphysics, a rather het-
erogeneous branch of philosophy, includes ontology among its subjects.

Farrell & Hooker argue that the second premise of the traditional distinction
argument is false, because both design and science produce the same kind of
things, namely artefacts. And therefore, they conclude, the argument for the
distinction between design and science does not stand. Of course, from the fal-
sity of the second premise it does not follow that the conclusion of the argu-
ment is false; i.e. that Farrell & Hooker’s thesis of unification is true. That
would clearly be a non sequitur. Nevertheless Farrell and Hooker appear to
draw this conclusion from the first sections of their paper, since they open Sec-
tion 3 with the following remark: ‘The conclusion that science and design are not
in principle distinct is reinforced when we consider the nature of intelligence’ (p.
487, emphasis added). We have already stated (in Section 1 above) that we
have no qualms accepting that both design and science produce artefacts.
The inference that Farrell & Hooker draw from that observation to the nega-
tion of premise 2 in the distinction argument may be disputable (as we shall
argue later, in Section 3.5), but let us assume for the moment that Farrell &
Hooker are justified in drawing that inference. Even then the question remains:
what, if anything, justifies them in considering their unification thesis a ‘conclu-
sion’ in the passage just quoted? To answer that question, let us examine their
negative arguments a little closer.

Adopting a definition of artefacts inspired by Simon (whatever is ‘constructed

by human beings to realise a function’; p. 484) and virtually identical to Hilpi-
nen’s that we cited earlier, Farrell & Hooker point out that ‘the whole of sci-
ence through and through is artificial, since every part of it has been
constructed by humans to contribute to fulfilling the purpose of understanding
our world’. This is apparently taken as evidence against the truth of premise
no. 2 of the traditional distinction argument (Table 2), in that it is taken for
granted that the products of design are artefacts in the same sense. The conten-
tion that the products of science are artefacts, just as are the products of design,
seems to be pivotal in Farrell & Hooker’s argumentation, and the next couple
of pages (pp. 485e486), they spend on carefully defending it against two
different objections that they imagine proponents of the traditional distinction
argument might come up with. Both of these objections revolve around the

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 contrast between what is natural and what is artificial. However, since we
agree with Farrell & Hooker that both science and design produce artefacts
(in Hilpinen’s sense), and since none of the objections against that contention
were made or endorsed by us, we see no need to criticize the further negative
arguments constituted by Farrell & Hooker’s defence against those objections.
Suffice it to note here that even the most careful defence of the contention that
the products of science as well as design are artefacts, achieves nothing by way
of supporting Farrell & Hooker’s thesis of unification. At most, it may be
taken to show that the second premise of the traditional distinction argument
in Table 2 is false, but that, as already noted, does not entail the negation of the
conclusion to that argument e i.e., the thesis of unification. It is therefore
misleading when, in the opening sentence of Section 3, Farrell & Hooker refer
to their thesis of unification as a ‘conclusion’. Up to that point, no valid argu-
ment has been offered to support it as such.

However, at the very end of their Section 2 Farrell & Hooker suggest an inter-
esting negative argument (almost as an afterthought, and slightly out of
context, since it does not contribute to defending the pivotal claim at issue,
namely that the products of science are artefacts). This negative argument is
remarkable because it is not directed against the traditional distinction argu-
ment in Table 2. It begins as follows: ‘Nor can an opposition [i.e., distinction]
between [science as] studying existing things unaltered and [design as] producing
novel things be sustained .’ (p. 487, emphasis added). Here two new distinc-
tion arguments are implicitly presupposed: one asserting that science can be
distinguished from design in terms of their purpose (studying, vs. producing),
and one distinguishing them in terms of their subject matter (existing things vs.
novel things). The negative argument continues, ‘. since science constantly
produces both novel abstract artifacts such as new concepts and theories,
and new physical artifacts such as new instruments, new technical procedures
and so on.’

As for the instruments and technical procedures, let us dismiss them for
simplicity as the fruits of co-occurring acts of design (and subsequent acts of
production, or implementation) in a scientific context. But we admit that sci-
ence produces novel concepts and theories, and that these may be construed as
artefacts, as abstract tools with a cognitive function (with the possible excep-
tion of concepts, if they are considered a kind of ideas or are otherwise classi-
fied as mental states). Still, we submit, producing those concepts and theories is
not the (primary) purpose of science, which is rather, in Farrell & Hooker’s
own words, ‘the purpose of understanding our world’ (p. 484). That is, the
(primary) purpose of science is to understand, or to study, our world e as
opposed to design whose (primary) purpose is neither to understand nor to
study anything (although such activities may co-occur with design). That is
the reason why we object to treating design as being primarily a kind of cogni-
tive action (Section 1.3). So the negative argument under scrutiny does not

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 convincingly preclude a distinction of science from design by purpose. And it
does nothing at all to rule out a distinction by subject matter, for even though
Farrell & Hooker are right that the concepts and theories produced by science
are novel (just as the products of design), the concepts and theories produced
by science do not constitute its subject matter. We can still maintain that the
subject matter of science is ‘existing things’, while the subject matter of design
is ‘novel things’. Or to put it perhaps more aptly (repeating the Skolimowski-
dictum from our introduction), we can still maintain that ‘science concerns it-
self with what is, technology [i.e. design] with what is to be’. (We consider
distinction arguments more directly in Section 3.)

In conclusion, then, the last negative argument offered by Farrell & Hooker
does not succeed in defeating any of the two distinction arguments against
which it is implicitly directed. And even if it had so succeeded, other distinction
arguments might still remain unaffected. So, like the other negative argu-
ment(s) of Farrell & Hooker’s, this one does not constitute a valid argument
for their thesis of unification of science and design.

2.2 Positive arguments e stressing similarities of science and

design
Let us proceed to the positive arguments by Farrell & Hooker. In Section 3 of
their paper, they produce various arguments in support of their thesis of uni-
fication; arguments allegedly ‘reinforcing the conclusion’ that ‘science and
design are not in principle distinct’ (p. 487).

In a rather difficult passage (we noted its difficulty in Section 1.2), they enter-
tain the idea that both science and design themselves, as kinds of cognitive
action, are ‘artificial’ (op. cit. p. 489). Whatever they may mean by ‘artificial’
here, appealing to this idea as such does little or nothing to support their uni-
fication thesis. Like the other positive arguments, whatever cogency this one
may have, depends on how relevant the fact that both science and design
share a certain feature is for characterizing them as ‘not in principle distinct’.
But no matter what features they may share, the obvious possibility remains
that there could be other features in terms of which science and design signif-
icantly differ.

In the same vein, Farrell & Hooker also argue that science and design are
similar because our intelligent capacity for problem solving is an evolutionary
outcome, and evolution has not selected ‘specific scientific cognitive capac-
ities’, such as constitutive reasoning strategies (i.e. reasoning in relation to Si-
mon’s ‘inner environment’ of artefacts), versus ‘specific design cognitive
capacities’, such as functional reasoning strategies (in relation to the ‘outer
environment’) (p. 489). Design and science alike, they claim, make use of
both reasoning strategies.

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 They furthermore consider some prominent definitions of design that bring to
the fore the general capacity for intelligent problem solving. For example, they
quote Willem’s definition of design as ‘the intentional development of any-
thing . [where] a plan or prototype for something new is devised’ (pp. 489
f), and assert that such creative problem solving characterizes science just as
well, ‘especially in new physical domains where existing methods and instru-
ments cannot be presumed to work’. However, such intentional development
of novel methods or instruments for scientific research is an example of what
we would characterize as acts of design that co-occur with acts of scientific
research, without therefore themselves being acts of such research (Sections
1.3 and 1.4).

Farrell & Hooker draw on Simon’s often-cited definition of design, too:

‘Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing sit-
uations into preferred ones’ (p. 490). They point out that according to this defi-
nition scientists are designers since they devise courses of action to change their
state of knowledge. Changing existing situations into preferred ones involves
problem solving and to do this in an intelligent way involves ‘[e]rror/misfit dis-
covery and avoidance, enhanced by opportunistic improvement’ (p. 493). This
intelligent problem solving capacity is part and parcel of science and design. In
this respect they are not different in kind.

Planning and inventing are further features shared by both science and design
(p. 490), as are synthesis, decision-making, creativity, ‘searching through large
sets of possibilities’ (p. 491); learning from failures or errors, and ‘opportu-
nistic improvement’ (pp. 492 f.).

These positive arguments all appeal to the fact that both science and design
employ the same overarching capacity for intelligent problem solving. In the
conclusion of Farrell & Hooker’s paper this is summarized in the following way:

‘Moreover, since both design and science are products of the general capacity
for intelligent action that characterises human intelligence, both of them are
most accurately represented, cognitively, as design processes. In sum, both
design and science use design processes and reasoning strategies to produce
artificial objects, therefore, they are not different in kind’ (p. 494).

Our main problem with all these positive arguments offered by Farrell &
Hooker is the level of analysis and the conceptions of design they have chosen
to defend their thesis of unification. These are chosen in such a general way
that any form of intelligent problem solving in whatever context or practice,
including science, is a form of designing.

For example, it may be true that this general capacity for intelligent problem
solving is the outcome of evolution (op. cit., p. 489), but what does that tell us
about more specific forms of intelligent problem solving in different practices?

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 Suppose that you want to learn to play the piano and you devise a course of
action to do so: you plan to take piano lessons and to practice daily for one
hour. This planning falls squarely under Simon’s definition of designing.
But what does this form of designing tell us about the specific physical and
mental skills that you have to develop in order to be able to play the piano?
Of course, when you start learning to play the piano you will run into prob-
lems, reading and understanding the score of a piece of music, and then again
you will devise courses of action to solve those problems. So, in turn you will
be designing, all the way down to the lowest level of activity, for instance, you
will devise a course of action to learn coordinate the movements of the fingers
of your right hand. Does this form of designing exhaust all the intelligent
forms of problem solving that play a role in learning to play the piano, in solv-
ing scientific problems or engineering design problems, or in solving whatever
problem in whatever practice? Does this mean that the only intelligent capacity
that we have to master in all these various fields is ‘[e]rror/misfit discovery and
avoidance, enhanced by opportunistic improvement’ (p. 493)?

Apparently Farrell & Hooker are aware that there may be differences between
science and design, but they play down their significance; as they say, there
may be

‘difference in norms between science, dominated by epistemic norms, and

design, dominated by practical norms, and related differences, e.g. with
respect to patents in science and design. Our contention is that i) the dif-
ferences are not as large as may be thought (each must also make some use
of the other’s norms) and ii) whatever differences there are do not affect
our conclusion here that, in respect of its underlying process (methods)
and its kinds of products, no difference has been made out between science
and design’ (p.490).

As regards the last point, it would indeed be strange if these other differences
would affect or invalidate the underlying process or method of learning from
errors; learning from errors appears to be a basic norm of rational behaviour
underlying any practice of intelligent or rational problem solving. In our
view, the differences in intelligent problem solving in science and design are
more important than Farrell & Hooker suggest. If indeed a good scientist
does not make a good designer and vice versa, then there is reason to assume
that from a methodological point of view the skills and competencies that sci-
entists and designers make use of in intelligent problem solving are different.5
The principle of learning by trial and error is simply too coarse-grained a cri-
terion to bring these relevant differences into sight. There is more to be said
about design methodology than that it makes use of an evolutionarily devel-
oped general capacity for intelligent problem solving.

To sum up, what Farrell & Hooker’s positive arguments do in order to ‘rein-
force’ their ‘conclusion that science and design are not in principle distinct’

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 (pp. 487 ff.) is to explore a number of similarities between science and design,
as briefly reviewed above. However, if by ‘not in principle distinct’ they mean
‘identical’ or ‘indiscernible’ (and what else could they mean?) it is hard to see
how their thesis of unification could have been ‘reinforced’ by any of this e
unless one assumes that identity follows from similarity, or that indiscernibil-
ity does. We will not accuse Farrell & Hooker of tacitly relying on an assump-
tion so patently false; but if they don’t, what is the relevance of the various
similarities they adduce, with respect to their unification thesis that ‘science
and design are not in principle distinct’? Certainly ‘reinforcing the conclusion’
cannot mean proving that thesis (in the sense of providing a valid argument
with plausible premises, and with the thesis as a conclusion). What Farrell
& Hooker achieve by way of reinforcement is at most to point out a variety
of ways in which their thesis cannot be strictly disproved. e However, by
our critical remarks regarding the thesis of unification and Farrell & Hooker’s
arguments for it, we do not mean to deny that the scienceedesign similarities
that they point out may be interesting in their own right.

3 Differences between science and design

It is time to strike a more constructive note, and, rising to Farrell & Hooker’s
challenge, attempt to ‘show a plausible conception [of design] that does not
include science’, and provide ‘explicit arguments’ for it, as promised in Section
1. To do so, we first consider the highly polysemous word ‘design’ and cognate
expressions, describing how precisely we shall use them for our theoretical pur-
poses (Section 3.1). As we shall argue next, the conception of design thereby
captured is plausible (Section 3.2), but even if we define ‘science’ in close anal-
ogy to ‘design’ (as in Section 3.3), design and science do not coincide (Section
3.4). For good measure, we go on to offer a defence of premise 2 of the tradi-
tional distinction argument (Section 3.5), and finally (in Section 3.6) briefly
address the issue of whether there are methodological differences between sci-
ence and design.

3.1 The word ‘design’ and other key terms

In ordinary parlance, the word ‘design’ appears both as a verb and as a noun,
each with a surprising number of different meanings and usages, as any good
and comprehensive dictionary of contemporary English will show. However,
for the theoretical purpose of the present discussion, picking a ready-made dic-
tionary definition of ‘design’ will not do. Modern dictionaries are based on
‘large collections of naturally occurring spoken and written texts, so-called
corpora’ (Mondorf, 2009). They are made to support the understanding or
production of utterances in natural language; but not as results of, or tools
for, rigorous conceptual analysis. Yet for such analysis to be plausible, it
must not only achieve conceptual clarity and precision, but also express it in
words borrowed from ordinary parlance, without violating (too much)
everyday linguistic practice. Thus defining ‘design’, for example, in a theoret-
ically satisfactory yet plausible way is far from trivial; and this may go some

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 way to explain why no manifest consensus has emerged among design re-
searchers about such a definition.

The best we can do to conduct a serious discussion on design versus science, is

to be fairly explicit about the way in which we use our key terms. As for the
case in point, we begin by putting forward the following definition, which as-
signs a meaning to the uncountable noun ‘design’, and does so in a way, we
contend, that is both compatible with ordinary parlance (i.e. ‘plausible’) and
precise enough for us to argue that design conceived as a kind of intelligent ac-
tion ‘does not include science’:

‘Design’ (noun, uncountable): the kind of intelligent action that consists of

proposing a novel idea for an artefact, so as to enable yourself or others to
make one or more artefacts according to that idea. (The idea is to be novel
in the sense that it is not the result of copying an already existing idea.6)

For example, this uncountable noun appears in the sentence: ‘Design is consid-
ered a so-called fine art, and is taught as such; but it actually pervades much of
everyday life.’ It is at the very focal point of our dispute with Farrell & Hook-
er, who frequently use it in connection with ‘science’, also an uncountable
noun (to be similarly defined in Section 3.3).

In the definition, the phrase ‘to make one or more artefacts’ reflects Hilpinen’s
definition of ‘artefact’ as ‘an object [.] intentionally made or produced for a
certain purpose’ (emphasis added to both quotes). Prima facie, to ‘make’ in
these contexts might carry a connotation of something material, as in ‘let
me make you a nice cup of tea’, or ‘the housing is made of die-cast aluminium’.
However, ‘make’ is to be taken in a broader sense, meaning ‘produce’, ‘estab-
lish’, or ‘bring into existence’, etc. As noted in Section 1.2, we take Hilpinen’s
definition of ‘artefact’ to cover not only material entities, but also non-material
ones, such as music or organizations. Our definition of ‘design’ inherits it
broad scope from that of Hilpinen’s definition of ‘artefact’.

The noun ‘design’ has a countable version, too, with a rather different meaning,
as illustrated (twice) by the following example: ‘Utzon’s design for the Sydney
Opera was a spectacular project, but he also made several interesting designs
for modestly sized private houses.’ However, to minimize potential confusion
we eschew this countable version altogether. Instead we shall use the expres-
sion ‘artefact proposal’ (another more self-explanatory term for what is called
‘design representation’ in Galle, 1999) by which we refer to whatever sketches,
descriptions, shop drawings etc. that manifest themselves as blueprints, CAD
models or otherwise, as an immediate result of someone performing an act of
design (i.e., as a result of the agent ‘proposing a novel idea for an artefact’).

But terminological caution should not be allowed to force circumlocutions

such as ‘performing an act of design’ upon us. Therefore we cannot forswear

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 the use of the verb ‘(to) design’. It, too, comes in two versions: The intransitive
verb ‘design’ may be defined either in terms of, or in exact analogy to, the un-
countable noun: ‘To design’ (verb, intransitive): to perform an act of design; or
(in other words), to propose a novel idea for an artefact, so as to enable .
(etc.).7 As for the transitive verb ‘(to) design (something)’, as in ‘Utzon de-
signed the Sydney Opera’: Once an artefact has been made according to an
idea expressed through an artefact proposal, we can convey this fact by saying
that the artefact was designed by the agent who made the artefact proposal e
or, in the active voice: that the agent designed the artefact in question.

The noun ‘designer’ is comparatively unproblematic. Keeping in mind the

distinction between the notion of designer as a socially institutionalized prac-
titioner and as somebody performing a particular kind of intelligent human ac-
tion, and given the above definition of the intransitive verb, we can describe its
meaning quite simply as: a person (or other agent) who performs an act of
design. Finally, we reserve the expression ‘designed artefact’ for referring to
an artefact that some agent has designed.

3.2 A plausible conception of design

The conception of design captured by the system of definitions above is plau-
sible, we contend, in that it does not radically depart from common parlance as
recorded in a contemporary corpus-based dictionary. For example, according
to one such dictionary, the first of seven meanings of the uncountable noun
‘design’ is ‘the art or process of making a drawing of something to show
how you will make it or what it will look like’ (Longman Dictionary of
Contemporary English),8 of which our definition in Section 3.1 may be consid-
ered a variant. It is more specific in some respects (‘artefact’ rather than ‘some-
thing’; some degree of novelty required), and more general in others (e.g., no
mention is made of a ‘drawing’ as the means of expression). Similar remarks
apply to the other key terms we defined.

Furthermore, our conception of design is plausible because it accords reason-

ably well with definitions and analyses in the design-theoretical literature. For
example, our definition of the uncountable noun was developed as a refine-
ment of ‘Creatively proposing an idea, so as to enable yourself or others to
make an artifact according to the idea’ (Galle, 2011, p. 93). Conceptually, if
not stylistically, there is also a conspicuous similarity to Bamford’s more
formal definition of the intransitive verb ‘(to) design’:

‘Someone, S, designs or formulates a design [what we called an “artefact

proposal”] for some logically possible thing, A (or type of thing, TA) at
some time, t, just when, (1) S imagines or describes A (or TA) at t; (2) S
supposes in (1) that A (or some token of TA) would be such as to at least
partially satisfy some set of requirements, R, for A (or TA) under some set
of conditions, C; (3) The partial satisfaction of R that S supposes in (2) is a

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 problem for which . (4) . the solution candidate [that] S imagines or de-
scribes in (1) is novel for S at t.’ (Bamford, 1990, p. 234).

Note that here, A (TA) is an artefact (type) in Hilpinen’s sense,9 because by

conditions (2) and (3) it is, in Hilpinen’s words, ‘an object that has been inten-
tionally made or produced for a certain purpose’: namely to satisfy (partially)
the requirements R under conditions C. Our definition implicitly covers the
notion of artefact type that Bamford mentions, because according to our defi-
nition, some agent is enabled ‘to make one or more artefacts’ according to the
designer’s idea. In other words, according to that idea, zero, one or more ar-
tefacts may be made, and so the idea plays the role of a type.10 Bamford’s
definition leaves implicit that the purpose of imagining or describing the ‘logi-
cally possible thing, A (or type of thing, TA)’ is to enable someone to make A
(or an instance of TA). In this respect our definition is more elaborate than
Bamford’s. The apparent simplicity of our definition, as compared to Bam-
ford’s, is due to the fact that much of the complexity introduced by his con-
ditions (2) and (3) is avoided in our definition by reference to the concept of
artefact, for which Hilpinen has already provided the analysis. Thus it seems
fair to say that all in all our conception of design covers much of the same
ground as Bamford’s and vice versa. Furthermore, both of these could be
considered simplifications of the very elaborate ‘reconstruction of product
designing’ by Houkes and Vermaas (2010, pp. 34e37), which additionally fea-
tures a recursive break-down of the artefact into its components. There are
also clear parallels to (Galle, 1999), in which ‘designing’ is defined as ‘the pro-
duction of a design representation’ (an artefact proposal in our current termi-
nology), after which a comprehensive definition of ‘design representation’ is
developed.

For the present purposes, however, there is no need to go further into the tech-
nicalities of the various definitions of ‘design’ in the theoretical literature. Suf-
fice it to conclude at this point that the conception of design we have proposed
is by no means unrelated to what has been developed by various design theo-
rists. There may not be consensus among theorists about the details, the
phrasing, or the technique of defining; but on the whole the overall notion
of design as an act of expressing a novel idea of an artefact in order to plan,
prepare or enable the making or production of such an artefact seems to
have considerable currency.

Yet the critical reader may question the plausibility of our conception of
design by asking if the ‘novel idea of an artefact’ to which we appeal is not
in itself an artefact e and worse: an artefact that must itself have been designed
(in order to fulfil the non-trivial purpose we accord it in our definitions)? If so,
that idea would depend on a second idea, according to which it had been made;
that second (designed) idea would again have been made according to yet a
third (designed) idea, and so forth ad infinitum. In short, our conception of

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 design is highly im-plausible, because on a closer inspection our definition pre-
supposes the very concept of design itself, and involves an infinite regress as
well.

Confronted with such criticism, we reply that nothing in our approach as-
sumes or implies that ideas are artefacts and that given the rather radical na-
ture of the claim that ideas are artefacts the burden of proof for this claim rests
on those who put forth the above criticism. Ideas, we submit, are not entities
we ‘make’ or produce, at least not in the same way we make or produce (ab-
stract or concrete) artefacts and therefore, they are not themselves designed.
The means by which people express ideas e poems, novels, artefact pro-
posals,11 or indeed scientific theories (as they manifest themselves in lectures
and publications, for example) e are artefacts, for they are intentionally
made or produced for a purpose (Hilpinen’s defining characteristics of arte-
facts).12 The ideas themselves, however, may be conceived of as mental states,
and as such may be acquired cognitively or through perception. We can ac-
quire, remember and forget them, but we do not ‘make’ them any more
than we ‘make’ other mental states; say, of confidence, confusion, mirth,
love, or whatever. Alternatively, ideas may be conceived of as abstract entities,
that we merely ‘access’ or become aware of cognitively, but on such a concep-
tion, it makes even less sense to think of them as something we ‘make’.

Nor does Hilpinen’s concept of artefact, as he himself analyses it, seem to

include ideas. He acknowledges that artefacts ‘form an ontologically heteroge-
neous collection of entities which extends across the traditional philosophical
boundaries between concreta and abstracta, and substantial objects, events,
and processes’ (2011, Section 6). The abstract entities include what he calls
‘types’ or ‘type objects’ (Section 2), but he seems to distinguish between arte-
facts (whether abstract or concrete) and what he calls the ‘productive inten-
tion’ of the ‘author’ (i.e., maker or producer) of an artefact. Artefacts
depend for their ‘existence and some of their properties’ on their author’s
(or multiple authors’) productive intention. But nowhere does Hilpinen
seem to describe such productive intention itself as an artefact. ‘The causal
tie between an artefact and [.] its author’s productive intention’ he explains,
‘is constituted by an author’s actions, that is, by his work on the object’ (Sec-
tion 4). So Hilpinen’s notion of an artefact-author’s productive intention is
very similar to our notion of a designer’s ‘idea for an artefact’. Even though
Hilpinen is not concerned with design as such, he remarks (Section 4, further
on) that the ‘productive intention is often expressed by cognitive artifacts
which show the character of the intended artefact and the way it should be
constructed, for example, a drawing, a diagram, or a model [.]’. What he calls
‘cognitive artifacts’ (the drawings etc.), are precisely what we have called ‘arte-
fact proposals’. (Contrary to Hilpinen, however, we will argue in Section 3.5
below that artefact proposals are not primarily cognitive artefacts.) Hilpinen
is mostly concerned with what might be called direct production of artefacts

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 based on a ‘productive intention’, while we are concerned with the more indi-
rect production that involves design; i.e. an initial production of an artefact
proposal which, in turn, enables the designer or some other agent to produce
the final artefact.13 Thus the theory of design inherent in the definitions we
have proposed may be seen as an extension of Hilpinen’s theory of artefacts
(apart form minor differences in terminology).

To sum up, our conception of design is ‘plausible’ in the sense that, as we have
shown, it is compatible with ordinary parlance, it is rooted in several related
analyses of the design concept from the theoretical literature, and it constitutes
a rather seamless extension of Hilpinen’s theory of artefacts. What remains of
Farrell & Hooker’s challenge, is to ‘provide explicit arguments’ to show that it
‘does not include science’. But first we should state explicitly how we intend to
use the other key term of the comparison, ‘science’.

3.3 An analogous conception of science

According to our definitions so far, what a designer does in order to design is,
essentially, to produce an artefact proposal; that is, a representation of some
novel artefact-idea with the purpose of enabling the designer or someone
else to make one or more artefacts according to that idea. To ‘do science’14
may be thought of (quite analogously) as performing another kind of intelli-
gent action, namely science. For the purposes of the present paper, we shall
assume that the following definitions apply (compare the definitions of ‘design’
and related terms in Section 3.1.):

‘Science’ (noun, uncountable): the kind of intelligent action that consists of

forming a novel, non-trivial, and well-supported belief about some part of
the world (e.g., natural, artificial, social3), for the purpose of better under-
standing. (The belief is to be novel in the sense that it is about a discovery of
new facts, new predictions or new explanations of facts previously described.)

The result of expressing the belief formed by such an action we call a ‘scientific
theory’ (under which we include an observation report as a degenerate case),15
and the countable noun ‘scientist’ will be taken to mean: an agent, who per-
forms an act which is an instance of science as defined above.

Without going into details about the nature of science or the scientific ethos
(which would require a lengthy analysis, e.g. of the notion of ‘well-supported
belief’), we believe that this brief sketch accords with the views on science that
Farrell & Hooker express, and that the general conception of science that it
suggests is just as plausible as is our conception of design. For example, one
meaning of ‘science’, according to the afore-mentioned corpus-based dictio-
nary (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English), is ‘the study of knowl-
edge about the world, especially based on examining, testing, and proving
facts’.

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 Furthermore, by defining ‘science’ in close analogy to ‘design’, we seek to
establish some common conceptual ground with Farrell & Hooker. It might
have been possible to conceive more polemically of ‘science’ so as to render
its meaning completely unrelated by definition to the meaning of ‘design’,
thereby ‘defeating’ Farrell & Hooker’s thesis of unification. But that would
have missed the whole point of the present discussion. As stated earlier, our
objective is not to prove Farrell & Hooker wrong, but to clarify (and, of
course, justify) whatever differences and similarities we see between (plausible
conceptions of) science and design.

The idea of comparing, and distinguishing, science and design while acknowl-
edging a certain analogy between them, is not new. Elaborating on insights
originally presented in (Roozenburg & Eekels, 1995, Section 5.5),
Roozenburg (2002) does precisely that. His point of departure, however, is
not a pair of definitions, but an analysis of design and ‘empirical scientific in-
quiry’ in terms of ‘the empirical cycle’, a notion taken from de Groot’s psycho-
logical theory of problem solving. This enables Roozenburg to visualize an
analogy very convincingly, by two structurally identical flowcharts of the
problem solving processes that constitute empirical science and design. He
compares each pair of analogous sub-processes in turn, finding significant dif-
ferences, e.g. regarding the desired kind of result, methods used, and criteria
for evaluating results. Summing up his comparison, he observes that ‘design
and research in modern science and technology [.] mutually support each
other, but to a large extent due to their differences’.

As will soon become clear, we tend to agree with Roozenburg’s conclusions,

but our theoretical point of departure is different: We aspire to cover a
more general conception of science than that of empirical research alone.
And as for empirical research, we do not wish to commit ourselves, as Roozen-
burg does, to the view that it involves observation and induction as essential
steps e a view that was vigorously challenged by Popper (e.g., see Popper,
1989, pp. 46, 53).

3.4 Why science is not design

A scientific theory, although it may itself be considered an artefact, does not in
general represent or express an idea of an artefact so as to enable anyone to
make an instance of that artefact. Here, we think, lies the crux of what makes
science different from design. (Admittedly, under special circumstances, as in
cases of ‘applied’ or technological research, a scientific theory may be an essen-
tial prerequisite for making an artefact proposal e say, for a new type of med-
icine, or a new kind of fighter plane e but that does not make the theory itself
an artefact proposal.) Therefore, science, as defined above, is simply not sub-
sumed under design, as we have conceived of it. (Which is not to say that sci-
entists never design, in their capacity as professionals. No doubt they often do.

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 For example, they may design methodical procedures or scientific instruments
for their research, as Farrell & Hooker point out.)

What a scientist must do in order to ‘do science’ is, as we contended, essentially

to produce a scientific theory (be it with or without co-occurrence of design).
By contrast, what a designer must do, essentially, in order to design is not to
make what would be analogous to the scientist’s theory: namely a designed
artefact. (For an architect, for example, such a designed artefact would usually
be a building or some part of a city; for a fashion designer it would be a collec-
tion of clothes; for a mechanical engineer, a machine or some other mechanical
device; for a graphic designer it might be a logo or a typeface; and so forth.) In
general, for a designer to design it is sufficient that he proposes a novel idea as
specified in our definition. But the definition does not require that actually any
(final) artefact be made according to that idea. All it requires is that proposing
the idea enables the designer or someone else (say, a contractor or a manufac-
turer) to make such an artefact (possibly after further designing concerning
various details etc. but that is not essential).

More generally: following a particular act of design, one or more designed ar-
tefacts may be made according to the artefact proposal resulting from that act;
but no making of artefacts according to artefact proposals must take place for
an act of design to have occurred. A student of architecture, for example, who
does a successful studio project as part of his architectural training, designs ac-
cording to our definition, even though no building is ever built as a result. Even
Jørn Utzon designed in vain as it were, when in 1953 he made a non-winning
entry for an architectural competition for a restaurant at the harbour front of
Copenhagen (Weston, 2008, pp. 48e55).

So, after completing an act of ‘doing science’, the scientist must have produced
an artefact of the kind that is the raison d’^etre of science: a scientific theory. But
after completing an act of design, the designer may have produced a mere pro-
posal for an artefact of the kind that is the raison d’^etre of design. (Or even,
perhaps, just have thought of it: ‘proposing’ the artefact mentally.) That,
too, is a reason why science is not design; indeed why design, in Farrell &
Hooker’s turn of phrase, ‘does not include science’.

3.5 In defence of the traditional distinction argument

We shall now argue that even though Farrell & Hooker are right that both sci-
ence and design produce artefacts, those artefacts are nevertheless so signifi-
cantly different that it is justified to claim that science and design ‘produce
metaphysically distinct kinds of things’, as premise 2 of the traditional distinc-
tion argument has it (Table 2).

A first point to be noted is that science as a social phenomenon produces

several, very different kinds of artefacts (experimental equipment, journals,

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 prizes, unions, scientific institutions, etc.), but here we will focus on the arte-
facts that are distinctive for science conceived of as a kind of intelligent, cogni-
tive action (see our Section 1.3), namely scientific theories. The other artefacts
may be considered outcomes of actions that co-occur with the practices of ‘do-
ing science’.

A scientific theory is the immediate and essential output of an act of scientific

research. In that respect, the theory may be considered the scientific counter-
part of an artefact proposal, which is the immediate and essential output of an
act of design. Now a theory may be characterized as a ‘cognitive artefact’, to
use Hilpinen’s term: it is intentionally made for purposes of expressing the re-
sults of cognition. However, it would be rather misleading to characterize an
artefact proposal as a cognitive artefact since it serves primarily a practical
purpose, namely to make it possible to produce an instance of the proposed
artefact (the function of the proposed artefact may be one to support cognitive
action by humans; for instance, the function of a calculator is to support users
in making calculations; but that does not make the artefact proposal itself a
cognitive artefact). For that purpose the artefact proposal contains a descrip-
tion of all the relevant features that must be realized when making such an
instance. Thus, an artefact proposal may better be characterized as a (sym-
bolic) practical artefact instead of as a cognitive artefact: under certain condi-
tions (relevant skills, materials etc.) it allows someone to do certain things, just
as, for instance, a hammer or a bicycle does, but in contrast to a hammer or
bicycle the artefact proposal has primarily a symbolic character. This symbolic
character it has in common with cognitive artefacts. But a scientific theory and
an artefact proposal are different kinds of artefacts. A theory is a cognitive-
descriptive artefact, whereas an artefact proposal is a practical-prescriptive
artefact.

To clarify this difference, consider the following thought experiment. A

designer has designed a totally new kind of artefact, called a ‘turbo-shaver’.
The artefact proposal for the turbo-shaver, which is itself an artefact, contains
all kinds of details about its overall function and of the structural features of
all of its parts. On the basis of this artefact proposal an actual instance of the
new kind of artefact has been produced and tested satisfactorily, and mass-
production of turbo-shavers has begun.

Then a scientist comes along who is interested in studying the new kind of arte-
fact, but he is not allowed access to the artefact proposal. He studies the phys-
ical features of an actual turbo-shaver and by reverse engineering, or by
flattery and clever questioning of its designer, tries to determine its overall
function and the structural features of its parts. Now suppose the scientist
gets all things right and produces a complete description of the turbo-
shaver, a report that content-wise is indistinguishable from the designer’s arte-
fact proposal. Nevertheless, the scientist has not designed the turbo-shaver!

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 There is a crucial difference between the (symbolic) artefacts produced by the
designer and the scientist. With regard to the designer’s artefact proposal, it
did not make sense to ask upon its completion, whether it was true or not,
whereas this does make sense for the scientist’s report. The report is a (true
or false) description (representation) of an actually existing object (or collec-
tion of objects). In other words, as a cognitive artefact, it is purely descriptive.
The artefact proposal, on the other hand, may be taken to be the definition of a
new kind of artefact that, if accorded a truth-value at all, was true by stipula-
tion. From the point of view of making a turbo-shaver this means that the arte-
fact proposal functions as a prescription. The definition of the turbo-shaver de
facto functions as a norm or recipe for making one; as a practical artefact the
artefact proposal is prescriptive in nature. In order to be able to perform this
prescriptive function the artefact proposal has to contain an artefact-
description. But that does not make it a cognitive artefact in the same way a
scientific theory is a cognitive artefact.

In this respect it is interesting to point out an ambiguity in Hilpinen’s charac-

terization of cognitive artefacts as ones ‘which show the character of the in-
tended artefact and the way it should be constructed’ (Hilpinen, 2011, italics
added; also quoted in our Section 3.2). So, Hilpinen’s cognitive artefacts are
descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. In order to avoid any confusion
with cognitive artefacts that are purely descriptive, such as scientific theories,
and because the descriptive element of an artefact proposal is a conditio sine
qua non for performing its prescriptive function, we think it is better to char-
acterize artefact proposals as practical-prescriptive artefacts.

Since designers’ artefact proposals are prescriptive as just explained, they have
no subject matter in the sense of some existing entities they are ‘about’,16 in
contrast to the scientists’ theories (as expressed in reports, articles, lectures
etc.). Despite whatever superficial similarities there may be between the sym-
bolic artefacts produced by scientists and by designers (as illustrated by the
turbo-shaver example), there is one all-important difference that sets them
apart: scientists concern themselves with what exists; designers with what
does not exist. Therefore we feel justified in claiming that the essential artefacts
produced by science and by design are, in fact, ‘metaphysically distinct types of
things’. And so it makes sense, pace Farrell & Hooker, to claim that the second
premise of the traditional distinction argument (Table 2) is true after all.

3.6 Methodological distinctions

The above analysis of the kinds of artefacts produced by science and design e
cognitive-descriptive artefacts, and practical-prescriptive ones, respectively e
suggests that there might be a similar contrast between design methodology,
and the methodology of science. Let us therefore briefly address the question
whether there are significant differences in the methodology of science and
design as problem solving activities. Here we take methodological issues to

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 be primarily concerned with the ways proposed solutions to problems are eval-
uated and justified.

In science, various criteria for evaluation of proposed solutions (theories, de-

scriptions) are in use, such as truth, empirical adequacy, explanatory power,
simplicity, beauty, coherence etc. Opinions on whether all of these make sense
and how they are related to each other (hierarchically or not) differ widely, but
truth, in whatever way interpreted, is usually taken to be one of the most basic
criteria, if not the most basic one. The list of criteria for evaluating artefact
proposals looks very different: efficacy, efficiency, feasibility, safety, beauty,
patentability, maintainability, and profitability etc. Truth does not occur on
the list; it simply does not make sense to argue for the truth of an artefact pro-
posal; it is tantamount to making a category mistake. As Kock notes, in
contrast to ‘factual claims’ that are true or false, ‘practical claims about pur-
posive choices’ are not: ‘it is categorically misleading to describe them as either
true or false’ (2011, p. 72, emphasis original).

Note that the differences in evaluation criteria of science and design run closely
parallel to our characterization of the products of science and design as respec-
tively cognitive-descriptive and practical-prescriptive artefacts. Cognitive-
descriptive artefacts, the products of science, are subjected to epistemic norms
and criteria, whereas practical-prescriptive artefacts, the products of design,
are subjected to practical norms and criteria. It goes without saying that this
difference in norms and criteria is a direct consequence of the difference in
stance (descriptive versus prescriptive) of science and design towards the
world.

Whether or not this difference in stance also leads to differences in the founda-
tions upon which justifications of proposed solutions are based, or to differ-
ences in the specific methods of justification in science and design, remains
to be seen. Usually justification in science is analysed in terms of the inductive,
the hypothetical-deductive and abductive methods. Whether these methods
exhaust the methods of justification in design, or whether specific methods
are employed in design, is an open matter. Often it is claimed that the methods
of science are analytic and those of design synthetic, but it turns out to be
rather difficult to clarify what this difference amounts to (Kroes, 2009).

Finally, trade-offs among various evaluation criteria play almost no role in sci-
ence, but in so far as they do play a role it concerns trade-offs between
epistemic criteria (values). In design, by contrast, trade-offs play a dominant
role, and these trade-offs may involve different kinds of evaluation criteria
(values); for instance, a trade-off between efficiency (technical value) and
safety (moral value). Various methods have been developed to deal with
such trade-offs (among which multiple criteria analysis), but again further

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 study has to reveal whether or not we are dealing here with a significant meth-
odological difference between science and design.

Even so, the above considerations taken together would seem to suggest
that an argument for considering science and design distinct in nature could
indeed be developed from a more thorough comparison of their respective
methodologies.

Apparently, this contention stands in stark opposition to what Dasgupta calls the
‘design-as-scientific-discovery (DSD) hypothesis’, according to which ‘[d]esign
problem solving is a special instance of (and is indistinguishable from) the process
of scientific discovery’ (1994, p. 210, italics original).17 Commenting on his DSD,
Dasgupta notes that ‘although it is mostly true that the aims of the natural and the
artificial sciences [design] differ, one should not confuse the differences in aims for
differences in methodology’ (ibidem); and that DSD, ‘if accepted as valid would
signify that science [.] and engineering [design] [.] are methodologically indis-
tinguishable’. Dasgupta furthermore conjectures, as a ‘central hypothesis of scien-
tific creativity’, that ‘[t]he process of inventing artifactual forms (or creating
original designs) in the artificial sciences is cognitively indistinguishable [.]
from the process of inventing theories or discovering laws in the natural sciences’
(op. cit., pp. 210e211, italics original).

To us, however, the similarities that Dasgupta highlights in his two hypoth-
eses are not so much about methodology in our sense of the word (stressing as
we do the evaluation and justification of artefact proposals and theories), as
about design and science understood as kinds of cognitive action. For Das-
gupta, methodology is about cognition involved in the creative processes of
design and science. In the chapter from which we quoted, he is reflecting
on the lessons that may be drawn from a comprehensive case study of
‘how a particular act of inventive design might have taken place’ (op. cit.
p. 189, emphasis added): viz. Maurice Wilkes’ landmark invention in 1951
of microprogramming for digital computers, and a control unit architecture
to support it. And to answer that question, Dasgupta uses a method of
rational-computational reconstruction of Wilkes’ thinking (the plausibility
of which as a model of actual events rests on its compatibility with historical
evidence).

The opposition between our view and that of Dasgupta is only apparent. For,
as we noted in Section 1.3 and at the end of Section 2.1, we do not see design as
primarily a kind of cognitive action, although it involves such action, and we
use the word ‘methodology’ differently. But to the extent that both creative in-
vention in design and creative discovery in science are instances of cognitive
action, we see no reason to deny the similarities that Dasgupta suggests.
This is perfectly compatible with our contention that, as we have been arguing,
design and science are distinct but related kinds of intelligent action.

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 4 Conclusion
From a very general perspective science and design may seem like identical
twins or ‘as like as two peas in a pod’, as the saying goes. They may both be
characterized, as Farrell & Hooker argue, as intelligent problem-solving activ-
ities that produce artefacts. But from such a perspective one may easily end up
claiming that, in Popper’s words, ‘All life is problem solving’18 and thus that
all activities in life boil down to one kind of action. Not all problems, however,
are of the same nature. As soon as we zoom in on the intelligent problem-
solving activities that go on in science and design, and the means and ends
involved, differences between the two kinds of activities become noticeable.

As Heylighen et al. remark (2009), the scienceedesign distinction may be aptly

described in terms of Searle’s ‘direction of fit’. What matters in science is ‘mind
to world fit’: problems arise when there is somehow a misfit between our
conception (theory) of the world and the world itself. In design problems
are all about ‘world to mind fit’: we try to adapt the world to our ideas by mak-
ing proposals for (effective and efficient) physical or abstract artefacts.

This difference does not entail that design plays no role in science and vice
versa. Modern experimental science requires the design and making of often
very sophisticated equipment, and design may necessitate research into phe-
nomena, for instance human behaviour. Thus, co-occurrence of science and
design is usually to be expected.

However, that should not be allowed to obliterate further differences between

them. Distinctions between kinds of intelligent action may be made on various
grounds, such as their (1) aim, (2) subject matter, (3) products, and (4) meth-
odology. Summing up our comparison of science and design as kinds of intel-
ligent action, we have reached the following results:

(1) Science and design have different aims. This difference in aim may be
described in various ways: to study or describe the world versus to
make things or change the world; the production of knowledge (theories)
versus the production of prescriptions how to act (artefact proposals).
(2) Science and design have the same subject matter, namely the ‘world’ (see
(1)) which comprises the domain of the natural and of the artificial: sci-
ence studies natural and artificial phenomena; design produces proposals
for artificial things. But, in order to do so, design studies (has to study)
natural and artificial phenomena, too (or draws on results from science).
(3) Science and design both produce symbolic artefacts: theories (and other
products of science) are symbolic artefacts just as artefact proposals are.
However, the theories of science are cognitive-descriptive, while the

Science and design 27

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 artefact proposals of design are practical-prescriptive. (This, of course is
related to the first point.)
(4) Methodologically, science and design differ with regards to the criteria for
evaluation of solutions to problems. Notably, truth (in some sense) is a
central concern in evaluating a scientific theory, but it makes no sense
to discuss the ‘truth’ of a designer’s artefact proposal. It would also
appear that in design, trade-offs among such evaluation criteria play a
central role, while this is not the case in science.

So, to answer the metaphorical question in the title of this paper: arguably, sci-
ence and design are relatives, perhaps even siblings; they often enjoy each
other’s company, but they are hardly twins, and certainly not identical twins.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank N. F. M. Roozenburg, and an anonymous referee, for
their thorough reading of an earlier version of this paper, and their many help-
ful suggestions for improvement.

Notes
1. Farrell & Hooker’s main sources of information on the conventional view are Simon’s
book and a paper by Kroes (2002), to which we return shortly. In that context they
also briefly cite Willem and Archer (on pp. 481 f). We have cited a slightly different sam-
ple of authors above, not only because of their succinct statements of the conventional
view itself, but also because the quotes suggest arguments in its support, which we will
discuss later on.
2. Between the two fragments just quoted, Farrell & Hooker also challenge proponents of a
scienceedesign distinction to ‘say just how to construe the definitions of artificial and
artifact so as to make out a relevant and defensible difference.’ We assume the difference
at issue is that between science and design, which is in the focal point of our paper. We
will have more to say about the notion of artificial and artefact below.
3. Since the meaning of the term ‘science’ tends to be biased towards research into natural
phenomena (as in physics, geology, biology etc.) which is inadequate in the present
context where science covers the study of the natural and the artificial world, we would
have preferred to use the term ‘research’ instead of ‘science’; the notion of research is
more neutral with regard to the character of its object of study (that is, whether it is nat-
ural or artificial). Moreover, the term ‘research’, just as the term ‘design’, may stand for a
verb and thus indicate a kind of action. However, we will stick to the use of ‘science’ since
Farrell & Hooker initiated the discussion using that term.
4. As Heylighen et al. observe (2009), ‘One may have to design a research project or a series
of experiments in order to obtain some results. Similarly, research may be needed for
designing an artifact [.], but it is not what design is about.’
5. In this respect it is interesting to note that CERN, as one of the paramount institutions
for performing scientific experiments in the field of particle physics employs many more
engineers than scientists; see (Board of European Students of Technology, 2013), where
under the tab ‘Detailed profile’ it says: ‘Surprisingly, only 2.5% of staff at CERN are
research physicists; 33% are engineers and applied physicists, and 33% are technicians
and technical engineers.’
6. This means that the idea is not necessarily novel in the more strict sense that it has not yet
been proposed by anybody. Somebody who comes up with a ‘novel’ idea for an artefact,
that unknown to this person has already been proposed by somebody else, is still per-
forming an act of design. That is, in proposing the idea, the agent who does so is merely

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 required to exhibit what Boden calls ‘psychological creativity’; not ‘historical creativity’
(2004, pp. 2, 43 ff.).
7. For the purpose of developing a theory of design, it is unfortunate that the verb and the
noun ‘design’ are identical in form. It would have been convenient if they were morpho-
logically distinct (as in ‘compute’ and ‘computation’, say), but coping with such quirks of
natural language is part of the challenge we face as theorists.
8. This dictionary is corpus-based, according to (Mondorf, 2009).
9. ‘Ontologically [Hilpinen explains], an artifact can be a singular, concrete object such as
the Eiffel Tower, a type (a type object) which has or can have many instances (for
example, a paper clip or Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls), an instance of a type (a particular
paper clip), or an abstract object, for example, an artificial language’ (op. cit., Section 2).
10. A philosopher of Platonistic persuasion might re-construe the ‘idea’ we talk about as
(what is known in metaphysics as) a universal. So when Buchanan, as quoted in the intro-
duction, says that ‘scientists are concerned with understanding the universal properties of
what is, while designers are concerned with conceiving and planning a particular that
does not yet exist’ (Buchanan, 1992, p. 17 n. 42, emphasis added), we do not consider
that remark a basis for a distinction argument. Science and design can be distinguished,
but not on the grounds that the major concerns of scientists and designers are universals
and particulars, respectively.
11. The form or underlying system in which a complex artefact proposal is expressed, e.g. a
data base for ‘product modelling’, or a standardized system of working drawings, may
itself have been designed, but once it is available as a medium for expression of ideas,
such expression of ideas does not in itself necessitate design.
12. In this context it is interesting to note that ideas cannot be patented; no one can be
granted a monopoly on an idea, but only on expressions of ideas, that is, artefacts;
see, for instance (Koepsell, 2009).
13. This roughly corresponds to a division of labour between the intellectual and physical
work involved in making material artefacts. The complex process of communication often
involved has been analysed in (Galle, 1999).
14. We resort to this colloquial expression for want of a verb that corresponds to the noun
‘science’.
15. Recall that in Section 1.4, we considered observing a solar eclipse as a primitive kind of
doing science. Correspondingly, the resulting observation report would be a primitive
kind of scientific theory, as defined here.
16. In this respect, they may even be thought of as belonging to a special genre of fiction
(Galle, 2008, Section 5.3).
17. Note how this is an almost exact mirror-image of Farrell & Hooker’s thesis of unifica-
tion, that science is subsumed under design: ‘both of them [i.e., design and science] are
most accurately represented, cognitively, as design processes’ (2012, p. 494).
18. The title of a lecture held by Popper in Bad Homburg in 1991; available in (Popper,
1999).

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Science and design 29

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2013.12.002
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