design-philosophy
Table of Contents
Notes, work in progress…
Quotes
Design is simplifying, not complicating.
(I forget who said it but it would fit with Rich Hickey).
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leanordo Da Vinci
Notes
The best design is not merely simple, it is even "self evident" (Stuart Halloway 2012).
- Elegance is the property of good design (in Software design).
- The Vitruvian Triad is "durability, convenience, and beauty".
- Elegance is pragmatic, useful and delightful.
- Elegance is mysterious, hangs together with truth, scientific discovery and art.
- In pure math, an 'elegant' program is sometimes the shortest computer program with a certain input-output, given an axiomatic system A.
Kolmogorov hypothesis of elegance?
- The best source code is usually not the shortest. But has to do with utilizing the material at hand, and doing so with a 'sensibleness', and 'straight forwardness';
- The best source code displays 'artistic swag', 'conscinitious' or 'technical sweetness'.
- One idea would be that by modeling real-world resources, combining 'short' and 'frugal' would yield a notion of elegance closer to the one in computer programing.
- Beyond simplicity, the best design is self evident. Self-evidence is the true swag, beyond even beauty.
- Elegance in biology in my feel has something to do with the range of possible uses of a thing. An elegant design is one that let's one win in the future.
- Like planning for the unplanned to occur. Because problem solving in the real world is open ended.
- G. Chaitin points out that adaptationism is wrong. It get's the open endedness 'keeps on going' part of evolution wrong!
- Therefore, the problems of creativity and open endedness truly are at the cutting edge of theoretical evolutionary biology also.
- Elegance is a creative problem and therefore open ended. I.e. there is no 'most elegant' solution to anything.
- The same way as we can always find out better theories of the world (Popper), we can find new creative ways of solving problems.
- Good desing is about winning, resourcefulness, usefulness and fun.
- It is possible to have a feel for the future uses and fun of a thing, in the context of future elements (forming a harmonic whole).
- This is on hand an element or module that simply 'fits many things well', therefore is safe to pick.
- But there is also a 'I predict future fun, given this element'. This is more a kin to a vague hunch that some unkown future element could possibly exist.
- A 'wild' move as it might be called in chess, changing the course of the game into fresh, unexplored configurations maybe.
- In terms of the Gestalt, percieving some parts of a whole (the assembled system in the future) might already give us a feel for the Gestalt of the whole.
Butterflies
Braitenberg: "Butterflies are the flowers of the animal kingdom".
Lit
- Vitruv
- David Deutsch
- Why Are Flowers Beautiful?
- Ranulph Glanville