Even though I'm writing less about design, those principles are there and I would say it comes up particularly in my view of Aristotle and the super important distinction he made that's ignored by almost everybody on the face of the planet, and certainly at educational institutions, where he said, yes, I created this scientific method. He is the world's first scientist. He said, here's how you be scientific…

(His book, Analytica Priora et Posteriora, one of the most important books in the entire history of science, if not the most important book.)

The world has become ever more scientific, all sorts of disciplines like my undergrad discipline was economics, and it's become highly scientific and quantitative and analytical. But all of those people in the entire world of economics and business ignored what the father of science said. He said you should only use my method in the part of the world where things cannot be other than they are. What part of the world would that be? The part where I've got a pen in my hand, and if I let go of it, guess what? It falls.

Last week, it falls in Fort Lauderdale, it falls in Saskatoon, it falls in Antarctica. What will happen next week when I let go of this pen? It'll fall.

So that's what Aristotle meant by the part of the world where things cannot be other than they are. Why? There's a universal force called gravity that doesn't come and go. It's always around. It always has the same effect.

And he said, use my scientific method: gather data from the past in order to be able to understand the cause of the effect.

(What he was most interested in his entire life was understanding the cause of effects. So he said, if you can study that enough, you'll figure out the cause of the effect.)

And sure enough, the world eventually figured out that there's a universal force called gravity, accelerates everything at 9.8 meters per second squared (32 feet per second squared). But that's the part of the world where things cannot be other than they are.

What the world has ignored entirely is a warning by Aristotle, where he said, there's another part of the world where things can be other than they are.

So if I think about smartphones, how many of those were there in 1999? Answer, zero. First smartphone was in 2000, the Blackberry. How many are there now? Last time I checked the data, 5.5 billion of them.

That is clearly the part of the world where things can be other than there are. No smartphones to 5.5 billion in a quarter century only. Think about that. Aristotle said in that part of the world, do not use my scientific method.

Now that has a profound influence on the entire world of design.

When these other disciplines like business— and that's super important for design because fine art doesn't deal with business, but design does. In that part of the world, you should not analyze the past to decide what to do in the future.

[Instead] You should do what Aristotle said.

He said, rigorous thinking in that part of the world where things can be other than they are, is to imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made. Not analyze the data and choose the thing that the data suggests.

The world of business teaches, and I ran an MBA school for a decade and a half, so I'm absolutely sure of this. The MBA world teaches the only way to be a competent, even moral business person is to crunch the data analytically in scientifically rigorous ways in order to make your decisions. That is the rule in business. Now, it's a funny rule, especially if you look at MBA programs.

In all MBA programs (virtually) across North America at least, first year, there's a required statistics course where you are taught how to make inferences from a sample to a universe.

I'm going to take a sample of electric vehicle drivers to figure out what EV drivers or people who might be interested in buying one think.

And the statistics professor will say, now, if you only interview men as your sample, you can't extrapolate to EV buyers because that is not representative of EV buyers, of which there are a whole bunch of women. Or if you only interview women, or if you only interview young people or old people, the sample has to be representative of the universe. And so you're taught that in statistics.

Then you walk literally 15 minutes later into a marketing or strategy class and you're taught, here's how you must analyze data to determine what to do. Fair enough. But what assumption do you need to make in order to satisfy your statistics professor who taught in the same (MBA) course across the hall from this?

What you have to assume is that the sample from which that data was taken is representative of the universe that you want to make a decision about. So you want to make a decision about what? The future. Making decisions about the past is kind of like, not helpful. In History (class), sure.

So you're taught, analyze the data [from the past] to make a decision about the future. If you're listening to your statistics professor, what do we have to assume about the future vis-a-vis the past?

It's got to be identical.

Because Aristotle would say, that's good. [If] the future cannot be other than the past, then taking a sample from the past is representative of the future world (he didn’t say it this way). But we know in the world of business, everything changes all the freaking time.

So we have a schism in the business school world itself, where we teach statistics and then we teach abusive statistics. Back to back to back. What implication does this have for design?

Well, designers are following Aristotle. Designers are trying to create, last time I checked, something that does not exist today. Right?

Even if it's a wedding invitation for somebody's wedding, if they're a graphic designer, if it's a chair, right? If it's a graphical user interface, they're trying to design something that doesn't exist in its current form now. By Aristotle's definition, his core definition, that is part of the world where things can be other than they are.

Otherwise, the designer would say, why hire me just to keep doing exactly, precisely what it is now? You say you want a better graphical user interface? Nope.

World can't be any different. Just use the one that you've got now. No.

Designers all work in this world. What do they do? In my view, they imagine possibilities and choose the one for which they can make to themselves and others, the most compelling argument.

So designers arguably are the only people in the business world who systematically listen to Aristotle. Everybody else in the business world ignores Aristotle. They take his method, which he said don't use here and they use it there.

So that's why you've got this huge schism between designers, in business, and other people in business. They're all playing a completely flawed playbook, and it's clear as a bell.

And if you just say to somebody in business: “So let me get this straight. You want me to make this decision based on this data that you've collected in the past. So that means the future cannot be different in any respect from the past.”

And they're like: “Oh, come on, Roger, that's insane.”

And I have to turn around and say: “Then what you're doing is insane, my friend.”

So there you have it. It will not go away. The challenge of designers living in the world of business will not go away until business wakes up and says, basically, we're being stupid.

Paraphrased From Finding Our Way: 54: At the Intersection of Design and Business, Be The Anomaly (ft. Roger Martin), 8 Feb 2025

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/finding-our-way/id1510667674?i=1000690252008&r=184

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