[Sigia-l] Herb Simon on design

[Michael Fry]

In light of all the recent discourse, here's something to chew on:

"...Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that
produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one
that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a
new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state.
Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is
the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences.
Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business,
education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the
process of design."

--Herb Simon, "Sciences of the Artificial" (p. 111)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262691914/

mf