Designing a Transformative Epistemology of the Problematic: A Perspective for Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research

ABSTRACT

This paper elaborates on the question of how to design an epistemological foundation for problem-oriented, collaborative forms of research, such as transdisciplinary sustainability research. It picks up approaches of twentieth-century European philosophy to the concept of the problematic and design research. The problematic is explained as a historical epistemological effort. Design research shows parallels to the epistemological thinking of the problematic by contributing to a differentiation and historicity of knowledge and knowledge production itself. Designing is constituted by a nexus of conceptual thinking and creative making, and so designs are drafts themselves. We interweave the thinking of the problematic with the practice of designing in order to open an epistemological perspective in and for transdisciplinary sustainability research. We call this a ‘thinking practice of problematic designing,’ which describes an epistemological tool as well as a transformative process. Problematic designing is characterized by always being in the making – its designs can grow beyond their conditions of production. By opening up manifold dimensions of transformation, this epistemological approach is oriented towards complexity, enabling the generation of sound and future-relevant knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Problematic thinking
• design research
• futurity
• complexity

Acknowledgments

We thank the reviewers of this special issue, the team of ‘Complexity or Control? Paradigms for Sustainable Development,’ the team of ‘Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformations,’ the TD Methods group at the Methodology Center of Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Claudia Mareis, Dena Fam and Bianca Vienni for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Transdisciplinary sustainability research positions itself as a mode of research between academic and expertise knowledge production and between distinct scientific and societal institutions or organizations. In the course of this, it is complementary to disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.

2. Moritz Engbers (2018) identified the current discourse in German-speaking countries based on the following authors: Jahn, Bergmann, and Keil (2012); Klein et al. (2001); Lang et al. (2012); Pohl et al. (2008); Scholz (2011).

3. An exemplary analysis of the term ‘problem(s)’ has been conducted through English-language article publications in the journal GAiA, with the help of computer-assisted discourse studies.

4. See https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2019/das_neue_alphabet/das_neue_alphabet_start.php.

5. To avoid misunderstandings: we do not refer to the term used by the Club of Rome, as it was prominently taken up by Manfred Max-Neef (2005).

6. For example, connecting problematic designing to John van Breda’s and Mark Swilling’s emergent transdisciplinary design research (ETDR), understood as a methodological approach, derived from ‘a case study in the informal settlement (slum) of Enkanini in Stellenbosch, South Africa’ (Van Breda and Swilling 2019, 823).

7. 1884–1962.

8. 1924–1889.

9. Born in 1949.

10. For ‘the concept of problematique initiates a critique of the subject–object relation in the explanation of thought in general and of science in particular. To think is not to try to tell the truth about any particular given objects (be this living organisms, things in motion or brains), as if there was a world out there waiting for us to lay our eyes on it’ (Maniglier 2012).

11. Further elaborated as singular problems by Patrice Maniglier (2012).

12. Just as the individuation principle and the individuation process necessarily exist incessantly in life (Simondon 2007, 31).

13. Correlationism is a philosophical position claiming that ‘a thought of reality that is independent from human knowledge’ does not exist (Savransky 2016, 196).

14. ‘Every experiment on the reality already informed by science is at the same time an experiment on scientific thought’ (Bachelard 2012, 29; Fichant 1975).

15. The quality of an epistemological break, in its radical nature, makes it impossible to think of.

16. We attribute cognition to humans, but would not exclude that it is also possible for other animals.

17. The contentual qualities of the break or the transformation of science differ from those at the time of Bachelard’s work. We are aware of it but do not address the differences in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been funded by the ‘Volkswagenstiftung’ under the program ‘Science and Scholarship for Sustainable Development.’

Notes on contributors

Esther Meyer

Esther Meyer is a doctoral researcher in the interfaculty research project ‘Complexity or Control? Paradigms for Sustainable Development’ (CCP) at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. In her research she is analyzing understandings of problems in discourses in publications on transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability sciences. She explores how certain understandings of problems are interwoven with theories about dynamics of change. Esther engages in transdisciplinary research, teaching and learning in the context of sustainability. She studied Philosophy & Economics at the University of Bayreuth and sustainability science in Lüneburg.

Daniela Peukert

Daniela Peukert is a product designer and works as a design researcher at Leuphana University, Lüneburg within the project ‘Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation’ and at the Methodology Center. Her research focuses on designerly knowledge production, transdisciplinarity and the role of design in transformative research processes. In her PhD thesis she explores the epistemic qualities of design processes and artefacts, and the ability of design methods to foster integration within transdisciplinary processes.