Circular causality and indeterminism in machines for design

Abstract

Presenting a hard-to-predict typography-varying system predicated on Nazi-era cryptography, the Enigma cipher machine, this paper illustrates conditions under which unrepeatable phenomena can arise, even from straight-forward mechanisms. Such conditions arise where systems are observed from outside of boundaries that arise through their observation, and where such systems refer to themselves in a circular fashion. It argues that the Enigma cipher machine is isomorphous with Heinz von Foersters portrayals of non-triviality in his non-trivial machine (NTM), but not with surprising human behaviour, and it demonstrates that the NTM does not account for spontaneity as it is observed in humans in general.& 2014. Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. BackgroundFrom the inside, it can be challenging to determine the scope, shape and development of the field one is operating in. Are the frontiers of architectural design research static, unvarying limits? Or are the frontiers of architectural design research changing borderlines, shifting according to modes, depths and directions of enquiry? To what extent do its design and research aspects overlap, and to what extent are design and research comparable or compatible? Do design and research have enough in common to be approached as equals, rendering insights into one of them applicableto the respective other? Are they viable models or metaphors for one another, or are they too different to allow such analogies between them? Answers to these questions, of course, depend much on what is meant by design and by research. Understandings of design and research, of their methods, tools and standards, diverge considerably in different contexts. The argument presented here addresses design, design tools and research methods in reference to systemic boundaries and circular re-entry, and with regards to the notion of determinability in order to shine a critical light on those instances where design and design research are approached in terms of purely linear cause and effect. It is shown that conceptualisations of design (research) in terms of (natural-scientific or computational) linear causality may be unduly limited.