The Sciences of the Artificial

The heart of the data problem for design is not forecasting but constructing alternative scenarios for the future and analyzing their sensitivity to errors in the theory and data.

The rules imposed upon us by organizations—the organizations that employ us and the organizations that govern us—restrict our liberties in a variety of ways. But these same organizations provide us with opportunities for reaching goals and attaining freedoms that we could not even imagine reaching by individual effort.

Alternatives are also open, in organizing the design process, as to how far development of possible subsystems will be carried before the over-all coordinating design is developed in detail, or vice-versa, how far the over-all design should be carried before various components, or possible components, are developed.

Social planning without fixed goals has much in common with the processes of biological evolution.

It can be endless, as can be the process of design and the evolution of human society, because there is no limit on diversity in the world.

Fulfillment of purpose or adaptation to a goal involves a relation among three terms: the purpose or goal, the character of the artifact, and the environment in which the artifact performs.

But as knowledge grows, the role of the professional comes under questioning. Developments in technology give professionals the power to produce larger and broader effects at the same time that they become more clearly aware of the remote consequences of their prescriptions.

Natural science impinges on an artifact through two of the three terms of the relation that characterizes it: the structure of the artifact itself and the environment in which it performs.

Homeostatic mechanisms are especially useful for handling short-range fluctuations in the environment, hence for making short-range prediction unnecessary.

Only human pride argues that the apparent intricacies of our path stem from a quite different source than the intricacy of the ant’s path.