Languaging Change from Within; Can We Metadesign Biodiversity?

In reflecting upon the serious and ongoing depletions in biological diversity, this paper calls upon world leaders to collaborate with ‘design thinkers’ [1][2][3], and other innovators, in addressing major environmental issues. This might mean intervening in new ways to change social paradigms, by tackling the issue on many levels, simultaneously. However, as designers are not trained to work with issues of such complexity the paper discusses the development of a more self-reflexive, comprehensive and integrated mode of design that it refers to as ‘metadesign’[4]. By reflecting upon design, biodiversity and evolution we hope to develop metadesign techniques that are more in accord with ecological principles. The paper describes a process called ‘languaging’ (verb) that enables metadesigners to find hitherto unnoticed opportunities whilst contributing to the team-building process.

[1]  Thomas A. C. Reydon,et al.  Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science , 2012 .

[2]  H. Maturana,et al.  The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding , 2007 .

[3]  R. Tarnas,et al.  The Passion of the Western Mind , 1991 .

[4]  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  L'avenir de l'homme , 1959 .

[5]  Rupert Sheldrake,et al.  A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance , 1995 .

[6]  C. Mora,et al.  How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? , 2011, PLoS biology.

[7]  Paul Bourgine,et al.  Autopoiesis and Cognition , 2004, Artificial Life.

[8]  A. Rayner.  Degrees of Freedom: Living in Dynamic Boundaries , 1997 .

[9]  S. Bhogle,et al.  LITTLEWOOD'S MISCELLANY , 1990 .

[10]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial - 3rd Edition , 1981 .

[11]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Metaphors We Live By , 1980 .

[12]  J. Austin.  How to do things with words , 1962 .

[13]  A. Rayner.  Space Cannot Be Cut—Why Self-Identity Naturally Includes Neighbourhood , 2011, Integrative psychological & behavioral science.

[14]  B. L. Whorf.  Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf , 1956 .

[15]  Hannah Jones.  Bisociation within keyword-mapping: an aid to writing purposefully in design , 2007 .

[16]  D. Reider,et al.  Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System , 2012 .

[17]  Stuart R. Harrop,et al.  ‘Living In Harmony With Nature’? Outcomes of the 2010 Nagoya Conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity , 2011 .

[18]  Auspicious reasoning: can metadesign become a mode of governance? , 2009 .

[19]  J. Sayers.  Against Method , 2016 .

[20]  T. Shallice.  What ghost in the machine? , 1992, Nature.

[21]  Aaron M. McCright,et al.  Climate change denial: sources, actors and strategies , 2010 .

[22]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[23]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[24]  Richard Howard,et al.  The Fashion System , 1983 .

[25]  L. Margulis.  Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution , 1998 .

[26]  Mathilda Tham.  Mode, tid och ekologi : system för hållbara modeögonblick , 2008 .

[27]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .