Design and New Rhetoric

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Design and the New Rhetoric:Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture1

Richard Buchanan

In a seminal article on the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages, RichardMcKeon proposed a strategy for inquiry that illuminated the developmentof the artin a period where traditional histories had found little of intellec-tual significance.2 He arguedthat instead of studying rhetoric as a simpleverbal discipline with a more or less constant subject matter drawn fromstyle or the interpretationof the works of poets and orators or the law, onecould study the changing conceptions of subject matter and purpose bywhich rhetoricians thought to distinguish and oppose their doctrines. Bystudying the basic philosophic differences that are implicated in changingconceptions of rhetoric, one could discover intelligible patternsin the de-velopment of the artthat otherwise may appearwhimsical, haphazard,ar-bitrary, or merely verbal. What followed was the discovery of how thedoctrines and devices of rhetoric in the Middle Ages spreadwith little rec-ognition to subjectmattersfar from those ordinarilyascribed to it. McKeonsummarized the patterns in three lines of intellectual development. Firstwas the tradition of rhetoricians themselves; second was the tradition ofphilosophers and theologians; and third was the tradition of logicians. Thearticle concludes with a discussion of how these lines of development wereextended in the Renaissance, with implications for the changing relation-ship of art and science that continues to unfold in the twentieth centuryaround the development of technology.What would a study of rhetoric in our own period look like if rheto-ric were explored by McKeon's strategy? Among rhetoricians the record ofpast meetings of organizations such as the Rhetoric Society of Americaprovides evidence for how the lines of intellectual development revealedby McKeon are extended in contemporaryculture. For example, we findcontinuing attention to the study of rhetoric as a simple verbal disciplinePhilosophyandRhetoric,Vol. 34, No. 3, 2001. Copyright 2001 The PennsylvaniaStateUniversity,UniversityPark,PA.

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with a more or less constant, traditionalsubject matterof style and litera-ture. The problems of writing and speaking remain with us, and the tradi-tional resources of rhetoric continue to inform new investigations. Inaddition, we find growing interest in expanding rhetorical studies to incor-poratethe interpretationof new kinds of literature as well as othercreativeworks in the cultural arts, philosophy, and the sciences and technology.These studies are often innovative, though they are also easily recognizedas an extension of traditional rhetorical arts. As Thomas Conley has re-marked,"thepresent in rhetorical studies is prelude to an encouraging fu-ture."3

Following McKeon's strategy,however, the study of rhetoric in ourperiod would not stop with the work of formally recognized rhetoriciansand scholars of rhetoric. McKeon arguedthat rhetoricis an unusuallyclearexample of a general tendency among the arts and sciences for doctrinesand devices to move across disciplinary boundaries and stimulate innova-tion in new circumstances. Rhetoric provides this example precisely be-cause it is universal in scope and sharedamong all intellectual disciplines.Furthermore,only rhetoric is traditionallycharacterizedfrom antiquity bymany of its leading theorists and practitioners as an art of invention anddiscovery. Whatever their primaryfocus in subject matterandpurpose, alldisciplines are concerned at some point with invention and the eventualdisposition of inventions in a medium of communication and application.Therefore, it is only properthat whatever our concern about the problemsof writing and speaking well, rhetoricians should also direct their attentionto innovations in other fields and disciplines, particularlysensitive to themovement of their own doctrines and devices and the consequent innova-tions thathave occurred as a result. The focal question is one of the centralissues thatconcerned McKeon in his study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages.How may we profitably consider the many innovations that have occurredin fields far removed from those traditionallyassociated with rhetoric,butwith a degree of independence from the field in which they are usuallycelebrated?

This is what McKeon himself pursued in his philosophical investi-gations of rhetoric in the twentieth century, and it formed a central themein his contributionsto the philosophy of culture. He combined philosophyandrhetoric,creatingan art of philosophic inquirydirectedtoward all com-munication, whether in the tradition of rhetoriciansor in that much widercommunity of inquiry that encompasses all of the arts and sciences. Heexplored innovations in a wide range of fields, using a philosophically in-formed understandingof the uses of rhetorical doctrines and devices.


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Among these fields, however, we have good reason to focus on onearea of innovation in particular.This is the area of technology, where phi-losophy, science, and art have joined to bring about a revolution in humanculture whose full significance we are far from understanding.The prob-lems of technology attractlittle theoretical or practical attention from tra-ditional rhetoricians,who regard words as the subject matter of their art.Indeed, the development of technology remains obscure to many human-ists, who struggle to find theirplace in technological cultureyet often settlefor superficial critique, without closely examining how technological in-novations come to be or how they are transformedinto the products thatinfluence our lives.4 Yet, following McKeon, we may profitably considertechnology from the perspective of rhetoric and its closely related disci-pline in our time, design.McKeon's speculations on rhetoric and technology are tantalizing.In "The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age," he provides a new wayof thinking about both rhetoric and technology, upsetting many precon-ceived notions about the natureof human-madeproducts and the produc-tive sciences in the contemporary world.5 He suggests that the directionfor exploring technology should be evident in the term itself. "The archi-tectonic productive art in an age of 'technology' is obviously technologyitself given a rhetorical transformation."He then demonstrates how thetechnology of rhetoric technologia in the lexicon of ancient liberal artsmoved from a practical orientation in the Roman period, focused on thecreation of a system of laws, to a poetic orientation in the Renaissance,focused on the creation of belles lettres and beaux arts, to a theoretic ori-entation in the modernperiod, where the productive power of rhetoric hasbeen transformedin new ways of knowing, doing, and making. The theo-retic orientationto which he refers is not simply theorypursuedfor its ownsake or for the sake of knowledge detached from its operative force insituated inquiry. It is theory as understood in the tradition of Americanpragmatic philosophy and in the tradition of rhetoric: theory as it is em-ployed in the humancommunity in a search for knowledge and in the pro-motion of new action and creation.

McKeon goes on to argue that the new rhetoric should provide thepathways for bringing theory into concrete experience. "In an age of tech-nology the diremptionto be removed is the separationof theory and prac-tice by the constitution of a technology which is theory applied, the logosof techne" Following this line of thought, he argues that the new rhetoricof our time should once again become a universal art,reuniting things andwords res et verba. It should combine the resources used to explore ver-


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bal rhetoric with the issues and subject matters of philosophy and the sci-ences, where "science" is used in the broadest sense to include the naturaland social sciences as well as the productive sciences of humanmaking.6"The new architectonic productive art should become a universal art, anart of producing things and arts, and not merely one of producing wordsand arguments ..." The remainderof the article is an elaboration of themethods and fields of the new rhetoric, with surprising insights into thedirections that rhetoric may take in understandingthe issues of our time.

McKeon never discusses the concept of design in relation to the newrhetoric, but it is not difficult to explain why design has emerged in thedecades since McKeon's work as a proper focus of attention for under-standing some of the directions of new rhetorical thinking.7 Design hasbegun to function as an architectonic productive art along the lines thatMcKeon projects.Inessence, design offers a pathwayfor bringingtheoryideas about the nature of the world and how we should live our lives- intocloser relationship with practical action and the creation of diverse kindsof products and experiences. Nonetheless, there are strong barriersto un-derstandingthe significance of design in the contemporaryworld. One ofthe commonplaces that remain with us as a legacy of the Renaissance is adistinction between the fine and useful arts. The fine arts were associatedwith the liberal arts and mathematics, usually representing a vision of aPlatonic ideal. In contrast, the useful arts were regardedas servile, materi-alistic, and lacking the degree of thought that belongs to mathematics andthe liberal and fine arts. The creation of belles lettres and beaux arts isusually celebrated as an achievement of the rhetorical tradition,under theinfluence of Plato, Cicero, and Aristotle. But this achievement, once sig-nificant for Western culture, seems less relevant for many contemporaryproblems associated with science and technology. Indeed, one could arguethatthe Renaissance vision of the liberal arts has decayed into a new sepa-ration of words and things that has proven nearly disastrous in Dewey'swords for our ability to understand, et alone discuss or shape, new tech-nologies in the twentieth century that support practical life.8 It has tendedto cut off the resources of humanism and the rhetorical tradition from dis-cussions of the development of science and technology.McKeon would argue, of course, that the doctrines and devices ofrhetoric have quietly operated as a significant source of innovation in sci-ence and technology since the Renaissance, and he has sound evidence forthis, developed as an importanttheme in the article we have just discussedas well as in many other writings. However, traditionalrhetoricians have


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been slow to recognize their resources for exploring the new directions oftechnology. For example, they have not considered the possibility that de-signers are the agents of rhetoricalthinkingin the new productive sciencesof our time. Nor have they considered the way in which designas theintellectual and practical art that provides discipline in the creation of thehuman-madeworld employs rhetorical doctrines and devices in its workof shaping the products and environments that surroundand persuasivelyinfluence our lives to an unprecedented degree.

One step in this direction is to sketch the framework for a rhetoricalstudyof design, suggesting the outlines of inquiryand the rhetorical themesthat are already significant among designers and those who study design.For this purpose, we may use the four quaestio or rhetoricalquestions thatidentify the masterissues in the development of any argument,idea, art,orother subject.9The study would progressfrom issues of fact andexistence,name and definition, and nature and qualification to issues of cause andaction, tracingthe central points of debate and the alternativeperspectivesthat have emerged with significant consequences for theory, practice, andproduction.10The issue of fact or existence- expressed in the question "is it?"may be answered by a brief history of design. The origins of design areeasily traced to the ancient and prehistoric world, but for most writers de-sign firstemergedas a distinctactivity with the IndustrialRevolution, whenthe conception and planning of products were firmly distinguished fromthe means of machine production and manufacturing. The invention ofmachines for serial and mass productionmeant that the same person whomade objects by craft techniques in the past no longer performedthe func-tion of design. Craftproductioncontinues to this day, but it is a relativelyminor and often expensive activity, even in countries that are at a rela-tively early stage of economic development. Ironically, craft survives in asignificant form within the practices of engineering design, computerpro-gramming, and other branches of design such as graphic and industrialdesign, despite efforts to reduce the activity of designing to a predictivescience.11

If design emerged as a distinct, recognizable activity only with theIndustrialRevolution, it emerged as a distinct discipline only in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For many people, the beginningsof the discipline of design are associated with the Bauhaus,because it wasWalterGropius who formed the idea of a "modern architectonic art"thatwould be all-embracingin scope, concernedwith "evolving all of the goods


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andbuildings specifically designed for industrialproduction."12However,the discipline and professions of design were in formation not only at theBauhaus but in many other locations, including the Carnegie Institute ofTechnology in the United States, where the first degree-granting programin industrialdesign in the world was established in 1934. Perhapsthe mostimportantpoint for our discussion is that design, like rhetoric, was prac-ticed as a craft and profession before it became a subject for theoreticalspeculation. Design emerged as a distinct discipline or art out of the prac-tices of tradespeople and a variety of professionals in other fields. Masscommunication and mass productionled to the creation of the professionsof graphic design and industrialdesign. This subsequently led to a prolif-erationof otherdesign professions, each now established with professionalsocieties and organizations, and the proliferation continues to this day asthe application of design thinking expands in innovative directions. Thecase of engineering design follows essentially the same patternbut beginsat least a century earlier.13The issue of name or definition- expressed in the question "what isit?" is answered by an initial characterization of design that fixes it as asubject for furtherinvestigation. In the case of design this has not been aprovocative issue, and the significance should not pass unnoticed amongrhetoricians. There is surprising agreement on the name "design" as thepropertermfor a vast body of work in the contemporaryworld. Indeed, thetermcontinues to expand in its legitimate usage, extending beyond graph-ics and industrial objects to embrace the conception and planning of ac-tivities and services as well as environments and systems. Design is theterm commonly used today to describe the invention, planning, and real-ization of both tangible andintangible products, including all of the digitalproducts that now exist alongside traditional analog products. The termextends in its application to the planning of software, information andknowledge systems, and to the physical hardwaresystems that we usuallydescribe as primary examples of "technology," following the restrictedmeaning of "technology" that one usually finds in the twentieth century.In contrast, the issue of nature or qualification expressed in thequestion "of what kind is it?" or "how is it qualified?" has been an issueof intense discussion and controversy throughout the twentieth centuryamong designers and those who study design. Debate around this issuefocuses not on an initial commonplace definition of the term which issimply agreementon a name but on more precise definitions that seek tocharacterize the identity of design and explain its similarities and differ-


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istic values and understandingto bear in planning our cultural environ-ment through all of the products of science, politics, and art that humanbeings are capable of making. This seems to be the goal that McKeon pro-posed when he outlined the new rhetoric as a productive art: "it opens uppossible methods of directing andrelating knowledge, action, andproduc-tion, by instituting an architectonic productive art of improving and in-creasing both the productionof utilities andgoods (utilia andhonesta) andthe use and enjoyment (uti and/rwi) of the products."15

The rhetorical uses of definition offer a good beginning point forclarifying the nature of design. For rhetoricians,definitions serve strategicand tactical purposes in inquiry.They do not settle matters once and forall, as many people seem to believe they should. Instead, they allow aninvestigator or a groupof investigators to clarify the direction of their workand move ahead with inquiry in a particularthematic direction. Rhetori-cians recognize manykinds of definition, rangingfrom commonplace defi-nitions of ordinary usage to descriptive and formal definitions.Commonplace definitions are adequate for settling the issue of name, butdescriptive and formal definitions serve to identify a direction for thematicinvestigation of the nature of a subject. Descriptive definitions, for ex-ample, tend to identify a single primarycause of a subject and point to-wardhow that cause may be explored in greaterdepth and detail, allowingan individual to create connections among matters that are otherwise noteasily connected. When designer Paul Rand says, for example, "Design isthe creative principle of all art,"he identifies individual creativity as themost importantcause of design. In similar fashion, when cognitive psy-chologist Herbert Simon says, "Everyone designs who devises courses ofaction aimed at changing existing situations into preferredones," he iden-tifies cognitive processes of decision making as the key to understandingdesign. There are many descriptive definitions of design, and they are asvaried as the insights of humanbeings and as varied as the causes thatmayaccount for design.Formaldefinitions are somewhat different.They tend to identify sev-eral causes andbring them together in a single whole, suggesting relation-ships thatmay be explored throughfurtherinquiry.Functional integrationis the primaryprinciple of such a definition, rather hanthe separatecausesconsidered in isolation. There are fewer formal definitions of design thandescriptive definitions, but formal definitions play an importantrole. Theyserve to establish the boundariesof a field and relate many otherwise sepa-rate lines of inquiry in a common enterprise. One formal definition that


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may serve this purpose is the following: "Design is the human power ofconceiving, planning, andmaking productsthat serve humanbeings in theaccomplishment of any individual or collective purpose."16Whetherthisis an immediately compelling definition- formal definitions are seldom asdramaticor vivid as a good descriptive definition- it does bring togetherthe variety of themes and causes that are explored in the study and prac-tice of design. If we wish to consider Aristotle's four causes for a compari-son with his definition of rhetoric,the formaldefinition of design identifies:(1) the creative capacity of individual designers as an efficient cause; (2)the sequence of goals around which the methods of design thinking andpractice have taken shape as a final cause; (3) the outcome of the designprocess in productsthat serve humanbeings as a formal cause; and (4) thesubject matterof design as found in any of the activities and purposes ofhumanbeings as a material cause.17The lack of furtherspecification in thematerial cause is significant, because design, like rhetoric,may be appliedwith regardto any subject. Design has no fixed subject matter,which ex-plains why it continues to evolve in a surprisingarrayof new applicationsand extensions. In essence, the definition suggests that design is an art ofinvention and disposition, whose scope is universal, in the sense that itmay be applied to the creation of any human-madeproduct.This makes ofdesign an artof forethought,as traditionalrhetoriciansperhaps regardtheirdiscipline as an artof forethought in verbal communication.At this point we may begin to ask whether design is a modern formof rhetoric or whetherrhetoricis an ancient form of design. Although wetend to thinkof the productsof design as artifacts graphics and industrialobjects there is nothing in our formal definition that would forbid us toconsider traditional verbal rhetoric as a species of design. This inversionmay seem strangeand unfamiliar,yet it accords with our understandingofhow information is shaped in persuasive argumentationand how, in con-temporarylife, it often emerges in new productsof technology. If rhetoricprovides systematic forethought in all of the distinct forms of making inwords, why should it not be considered an art of design?18Before address-ing this issue further, however, it is wise to continue our sketch of theframeworkfor a rhetoricalstudy of design. Perhapsas we consider the useof rhetorical doctrines and devices in the emerging art of design we willcome to a better understandingof the relationship between rhetoric anddesign.One direction for furtherrhetorical investigation is easy to imagine.It involves the study of verbal communication in the design process. This


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is an innovative, though easily predicted, extension of traditionalrhetoric.We see evidence of the beginnings of this work in a variety of recent pa-pers, articles, and doctoral dissertations.19The importanceof such workshould be apparent,since designers are deeply concerned with persuasionand negotiation in all of the matters that they seek to advance with clientsand the general public. The problemof verbal argument n design- includ-ing the supportinguse of images, diagrams,and prototypes is significanttoday precisely because designers seek a middle course between the ana-lytic and statistical argumentsof engineers, marketing experts, and socialscientists and appeals to the higher authorityof intuition that were oftenmade in the early days of design and continue among some designers to-day, representedin the phrase "trustme."

Following McKeon's strategy, however, we should also study theideas and methods that have shaped the discipline of design over the pastcentury and that will continue to shape it in the next century.Here, in thegrowing body of design literature andin the workingdiscussions andprac-tices of professional designers, we find the rhetorical doctrines and de-vices that would otherwise be neglected in a traditionalhistory of rhetoricconsidered merely as a verbal discipline. In pursuingthis matter,however,we should be cautious in applying verbal language as a model for under-standingthe practices andproductsof design, as a traditional rhetoricianisperhaps tempted to do. If we mean by language only words, then the effortwill yield little more than a superficial understandingof the nature of prod-ucts or of design thinking. But if we recognize language as symbols in avariety of modes of expression, then we may have found a way of gainingaccess to some of the most significant parts of design.

John Dewey provides the bridge that we need. He writes, "Wherewritten language and literacy abound, the conception of language is likelyto be framed upon their model. The intrinsic connection of language withcommunity of action is then forgotten. Language is then supposed to besimply a means of expressing or communicating 'thoughts' a means ofconveying ideas or meanings that are complete in themselves apartfromcommunal operational force."20 In contrast, he suggests an approachinwhich language has a broadermeaning:In this further discussion, language is taken in its widest sense, asense wider than oral and written speech. It includes the latter. But it in-cludes also not only gestures but rites, ceremonies, monuments and theproductsof industrial and fine arts.A tool or machine, for example, is notsimply a simple or complex physical object having its own physical prop-


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erties andeffects, but is also a mode of language. For it says something, tothose who understandit, about operations of use and their consequences.To the members of a primitive community a loom operated by steam orelectricity says nothing. It is composed in a foreign language, and so withmost of the mechanical devices of modern civilization. In the presentcul-turalsetting, these objects are so intimately bound up with interests, occu-pations and purposes that they have an eloquent voice.21We need not explore the implications of Dewey' s ideas about lan-guage for the practice of traditional rhetoric, except to observe that inDewey's approach, words and things are not as strongly divided as theyhave been in other approaches to rhetoric over the past hundredyears ormore. More to our present purpose is the implication of these ideas forunderstandingthe nature of products in design thinking, for this is a keyissue that McKeon addresses in his paperon architectonic productive arts,and it is the issue that is likely to be the primaryobstacle for traditionalrhetoriciansin understandingthe importanceof design.It is a commonly held view that most of the products that surroundus in our daily lives are ephemeral in nature, trivial in their significance,andlacking in substantial ntellectual contentor value. While there is surelysome truthin this, the same could also be said for most of the words thatsurroundus in various media and in ourdaily conversations. We are cultur-ally preparedto see throughthe ephemeral aspect of words and give seri-ous attention to verbal communication, but we ignore the serious study ofother human-madeproducts, except the most refined examples of the finearts. This attitude has led many people to reduce design to a superficial,almost mindless, manifestation of underlying social and economic forcesin consumer culture.22 ndeed,we have so little graspof the natureof prod-ucts that we lack a commonly understoodvocabulary of terms to describethem and we believe that products come to be in some simple practicalapplication of theoretical principles drawn from the sciences. Even amongengineers and computer scientists, there is sometimes a surprisingdegreeof misunderstandingabout how technological ideas are transformed intotrueproducts what we may call "whole products,"to distinguish the fullyrealized product from the many products that are only partially realized.Our universities and government research organizations are comfortablewith the relationship between basic and applied research, but they are illpreparedto recognize the intellectual gulf that exists between applied re-search and the development of successful products,as judged by whatevercriteria we may employ. A new technology does not lead automatically to


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the creation of successful products.This step depends on the expertise ofdesign and "making,"where knowledge from many fields must be inte-grated in the product development process. Our universities are comfort-able with basic research, and many institutions tolerate applied research.But only a handful of universities have begun to recognize production or"making"as a domain of significant problems and expertise that also re-quire investigation.Products have persistentconsequences in the behavior of humanbe-ings, whether we consider a product's style or its deeper synthesis of tech-nological reasoning.This is why the establishment of criteria for successfulproducts is one of the central "wicked problems" of design thinking to-day.23It is essentially a political problem of competing values and priori-ties that designers must learn to navigate with integrity. The typical viewof design as a styling of the appearanceof productsis a serious misconcep-tion of the actual work of the designer. It is comparableto the popularviewof rhetoric as the mere styling of verbalexpression. For botharts,the deeperwork lies in the invention and disposition of form and content.

In approachingdesign from a rhetoricalperspective, our hypothesisshould be that all products digital and analog, tangible and intangibleare vivid argumentsabout how we should lead our lives.24The argumentsprovide alternatives for the short-term tasks and activities of everyday liv-ing, but they also have long-term implications that are subtler and lesseasily understood.25Productsembodyculturalvalues andknowledge drawnfrom many fields of learning, and products express values and knowledgein a complex debate conducted not in words but in nonverbal language. Ofcourse, we are referringto the classic productsof design, found in graphiccommunication and industrial objects. But the hypothesis also applies tothe newer, more complex products of the digital medium. The new digitalor electronic medium, whose rhetorical forms are now under creation inthe leading design schools and in industry,representsa blending of modesof communication, a synthesis of images, words, andartifacts,and a blend-ing of actions, environments, and systems of use that are both physical andcultural. If we recognize, as McKeon seems to suggest, that productsalsoinclude the works of science and politics- the construction of scientifictheories and the organization of behavior in institutions then some formof design thinking touches all aspects of contemporaryculture, creating avast terrainfor debate about how we should lead our lives.

This idea becomes concrete when we consider the features of prod-ucts that make them persuasive and influential. This, too, is an area where


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many of the doctrines and devices of rhetoric have quietly spread withinnovative consequences for teaching, research, and theory. To illustrate,we may briefly consider how the classical themes of logos, pathos, andethos have emerged in design theory to focus attention on features of prod-ucts and aspects of design practice. The specific rhetorical terms are notcommon among those who practice design, but they have begun to receiveexplicit attention among some design theorists and, certainly, the doc-trines and devices that these terms representare more widely understoodand explored by professional designers than traditional rhetoricians maysuspect.26

Logos for the rhetorician is the intelligent, rational argumentof aspeech or a discourse. For the designer, logos is technological reasoning orthe intelligent structureof the subject of their design. If there ever was atime when designers disguised their work by describing it in terms of styleand aesthetic form alone, that time is past. Form and content are exploredin close relationship, anddesigners arerequiredto gain a surprisingly highlevel of understandingof subject matter,drawing on the natural sciencesand engineering as well as the social sciences. For example, engineers aresometimes surprisedby the extent of anexperienceddesigner's understand-ing of mechanical principles. Where designers do not have mastery of asubject, they have become adeptin collaboration with engineers, computerscientists, or content experts. Success in resolving the problemof logos, ortechnological reasoning, means that a productis useful in performance.Itis capable of doing its work.Pathos for the rhetorician is the strand of argumentthat appeals tothe feelings and social circumstances of the audience. It is quite similar forthedesigner,who seeks to incorporate eatures thatappealto specific groupsof individuals. However, pathos is also captured by the designer in theconcept of "affordance,"which has come to mean the suitability or "fit" ofa productto the intended user or community of use, whether this involvesphysical, cognitive, emotional, or cultural features and adjustments.Affordance is how a material whether a natural material or the refinedmaterial of a product is made suitable to human use. From a technicalperspective, a machine may indeed be capable of performing a certainmechanical function; but unless we can operate the machine and wish tooperate it because it is culturally acceptable nothing can be done. A use-ful analogy with traditional rhetoric may lie in the transformation of thethree-part ogical syllogism into an enthymeme or, as Cicero himself sug-gests, into a five-part syllogism. In either case, the transformation takes


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place because the speaker seeks to make the reasoning accessible to anaudience. Similarly, doors exist in buildings in orderto give people accessto the architectural structure. Success in solving the problem of pathos, oraffordance, means that a productis usable by a humanbeing.

Finally, ethos for the rhetorician is the implied character of thespeaker, leading to a special relationship with members of the intendedaudience. For the designer, ethos is often characterizedas the "voice" of aproduct,which means the implied characteror personality of the manufac-turer as it is represented in a product and as it creates a relationship of"identification"with those who use a product."Branding"or "brandname"is another term associated with ethos for the designer, but brandingrefersto voice as it is sustained across a range of products from the same manu-facturer and, thus, it is often an "inartificial" proof of the quality of aproduct.Aesthetics is part of the concern in shaping "voice," but only apart.Formal aesthetics appeals to a relatively small number of people, andthe rangeof aesthetic styles in design is exceptionally wide, with no agreed-upon standardof quality. Rather,aesthetics is perhaps best viewed as anexpression of the voice of the designer or the manufacturer.The appeal ofaesthetics lies first in the kind of identification we feel with the voice ofthe product.Products that are "beautiful"appealonly to a small number ofpeople, whose tastes andpreferencesare shaped by cultural circumstances.When aesthetic quality becomes so compelling that it is the sole focus ofattention,the productis often regardedas a work of fine art which is howsuch products have entered museums. That this happens at all in usefulproducts andit does to a surprisingdegree in the work of the best design-ers is perhaps a sign of the human capacity for the appreciation of aes-thetic experience that is unalloyed with practical demands.27Success insolving the problem of ethos, or voice, means that a human being mayidentify with the productand that the productis desirable.28If a productis persuasive in the debate about how we should lead ourlives, it is so because a designer has achieved a powerful and compellingbalance of what is perceived to be useful, usable, and desirable. The con-cept of balance is strong among many designers, who sometimes describeit as the "designer's stance." Of course, we may quickly recognize the af-finity between the designer's stance and what Wayne Booth describes asthe "rhetorical stance."29 Furthermore, the typical corruptions of thedesigner's stanceparallelthe corruptionsof the rhetoricalstance that Boothdescribes. Excessive emphasis on technological reasoning often betraysthe dominance of engineering or computerscience in the product develop-


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ment process. Excessive emphasis on appealing to the consumer often be-trays the dominance of marketing experts or, increasingly in product de-velopment, social and behavioral scientists. And excessive emphasis onstyle and product voice often betrays the dominance of those designerswho regardthemselves as expressive fine artists.There is little need to citeexamples because weak products are as ubiquitous as poor writing.What is more significant is the issue of what the appropriatebalanceshould be in a particularproductor in products in general. This is one ofthe most complex problems in design, and it is a problem precisely be-cause of the pluralism of competing visions and philosophies of designthat have existed since the earliest days of design practice. Designers holda wide range of philosophical beliefs about the nature of the world and theplace of humanbeings within it, and their beliefs are often clearly evidentin the features of the products that they create. This reflects the signifi-cance of the idea thatdesign combines logos and techne. Indeed, this is ourcentral claim about the development of rhetorical themes in design: prod-ucts are argumentsabout how we should lead our lives. Designers are en-gaged in a humanizingof technology thatgoes beyond the work of engineersandcomputerscientists, andthe concepts and devices of rhetoric have pro-vided many of the instrumentalitiesneeded for this work.The intentions ofdesigners andtheir clients areexceptionally diverse, accounting in partforthe wide arrayof products that surround us in our daily lives. In turn, theexpectations of human beings are also exceptionally diverse, accountingfor anotherpartof the arrayof products in contemporarylife. Design hasarisen to provide the mediating middle of our culture in this debate, muchas verbal rhetoric provides the mediating middle among competing ideasexpressed in verbal discourse.Rhetoricalandphilosophical studies of the pluralismof design think-ing would be a significant contribution to furtherdevelopment of designand to its understandingamong people outside the field.30 The pluralismofphilosophies of design is one reason that the nature of design as a disci-pline has remainedambiguous throughoutthe twentieth century.Nonethe-less, there has been a gradual convergence of design thinking aroundthedesigner's responsibility to the human beings who use their products towhat we sometimes call the "communityof use" in order to emphasize thehumanism that is missing in terms such as "user" and "consumer."Thereare, of course, sharplydifferent ideas about what these responsibilities areand how they may be best fulfilled. But the focus on humanbeings againsuggests how rhetoricalthemes have entereddesign in theory andpractice.


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The natureof design is partly revealed in the qualities of products.But it is also revealed in the processes of design thinking that lead to thecreation of products.There is little agreement among practicing designersor design educators about what constitutes the precise patternof the designprocess. The patternis usually described in terms of procedural steps, butthere is little agreementon the number or what they are. Indeed, this is anarea of intense discussion and research in the design community, repre-sented in a long literature. Practice is highly idiosyncratic and typicallyinfluenced in subtle ways by the philosophic perspective of the designer.However, the different proceduresof designing seem to converge in a setof fundamental artsof design thinking.The arts bear a close relationshiptothe methods that McKeon outlined as central to the new rhetoric.

First, designers are fundamentallyconcerned with the conception orinvention of new products, and their discussions have yielded a rich vari-ety of common and proper places that they employ in generating possibleinnovations.31 Second, designers are concerned with judgment, whichmeans selecting among possible inventions or product concepts those thatare potentially viable as constructs in particularcircumstances and undergiven conditions. The problemof selection andjudgment is properlya pre-liminary form of decision making, concerned with the interpretationofpossibilities and the factors that bear on "realistic" possibilities. Third,designersareconcerned with how a productconcept is developed andtested.Designers employ many methods and techniques that deserve close atten-tion, but this is where the central themes of design thinking receive theirfull exploration in concrete prototypes thatexpress the useful, usable, anddesirable. In the language of traditionalrhetoric,this is the area of arrange-ment and disposition, where a specific product possibility is explored inconcrete development, much as a speech undergoes development. Thereare, as one may expect, competing ideas about what constitutes the best orpropermethod of decision making, andrhetoriciansmay be able to make acontributionin understanding his matter since they areparticularlyskilledwith argumentationunder conditions of uncertaintyand ambiguity, wherepossibility and probability are intimately connected.32Fourth,designersareconcerned with evaluating the objective worth of products.The criteriafor evaluating products and determining whether they should be carriedforward in production and distribution come from many sources. Theycome from the personal values of the designer, the interests of the manu-facturer andclient, the needs anddesires of individual communities of use,and society at large. This aspect of design thinking is obviously grounded


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in the translative issue of rhetoric, since we must ask who is the properjudge of the value or worth of a productas it is being developed and after ithas been produced. Design historian Adrian Forty has shown that design-ers are seldom the final judges in productdevelopment.33Nonetheless, theeconomic andethical issues surroundingproduct development are a matterof ongoing concern among designers, who must ultimately decide whetherthey will participatein the development of a specific product.34The four artsof design have many parallels with the traditional divi-sions of rhetoric,but they also indicate how design thinkinghas introducedsome refinements that are suited to the new circumstances of persuasivecommunication. Cicero recognized a distinction between invention andjudgment, anddesigners have found a similar need in the complex circum-stances of developing a productconcept. They have also found a need fordistinguishing arrangementfrom evaluation. There is, indeed, a form ofevaluation that is an aspect of the process of developing a product proto-type. Designers develop prototypes in an iterative process of constructionand testing, where the testing provides tactical evaluation. However, thereis a deeper form of evaluation, strategic evaluation, that assesses the ob-jective worthof a product.This aspect of evaluation has emerged in designas a concrete problem in management and, equally significant, as a prob-lem for those who must ultimately decide whether to use a product.There is, of course, a fifth art of design, concerned with expressionor style. Wehave alreadyreferred to this aspect of design in othercontexts,but what is worth noting here is that expression for the designer is notsimply the final visual expression of a product. Visualization is an artfulconsideration at each stage of the four primary arts of design thinking.Sketches, diagrams,andpreliminaryprototypes are all conceived with per-suasive intent, and a rhetorical study of this aspect of design reveals howexpression and delivery- as well as memory are woven together in de-sign practice. Issues of expression are distributedacross the four primaryarts of design thinking, for arguments at each stage of conception, plan-ning and realizationmustbe presentedin a compelling manner.This shouldremind us that the arts of design are not simply procedural steps in thedesign process. They form a sequence of considerations, but the consider-ations are integral and sometimes simultaneous in practice.

In the final stage of a rhetorical study of design, we should turn tothe issue of cause or action. This issue- sometimes expressed in the ques-tion "why is it?" suggests the need for philosophic discussion of the pur-poses of design in cultureand a philosophical examination of the principles


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that guide design. But rhetoricians following Cicero have interpretedthetranslative issue in terms of the individual or group thatjudges the valid-ity, value, or significance of an action expressed in the question "whoshall judge?" or "where shall the action be brought?" In either formphilosophical or rhetorical the issue is complex in the new rhetoric andin the discipline of design.We have already observed the simplest and most obvious relevanceof the translative issue in design when discussing the criteria for judgingthe value of a product.Many individuals and groups are involved in judg-ing the worth of a productin various stages of productionanddistribution.However, the issue of cause or action plays anotherrole in the philosophyof culture, as McKeon understood with considerable insight:

Wemakesubject-matterso fit the examination nd resolutionof problems,andthe solutionof problemsbrings o our attention urther onsequent rob-lems,whichfrequently equire hesettingupand examination f new fields.Rhetorichasreplacedmetaphysics s an architectonic rt,in thepast,whenthe organization ndapplication f the arts and scienceswas based,not onsupposednatures f thingsorperceived ormsof thought,but on recognitionof theconsequences f whatmensay anddo.35The issue of cause or action in the philosophy of culture is based on theproblems that individuals and communities seek to address. In classicalrhetoric, following Aristotle, the problems addressedby rhetoric are iden-tified as forensic, deliberative, and epideictic. They are presented in theRhetoric in terms of thejudgments that audiences are called upon to make,and they provide the quasi-subject matters that characterize rhetoric as auniversal art. In the new rhetoric described by McKeon, the problems weaddress often have wider philosophical significance, are located in newspaces and places, and have unexpected consequences for inquiry as wellas action. Individuals, communities of experts, and the general public arestill called upon to make judgments of the validity and significance of a"cause,"but theirjudgments effectively establish and constitute new sub-ject matters,new disciplines, and new fields of inquiry.As McKeon pointsout, this is evident in social action, where, for example, the civil rightsmovement employed "demonstrations" n order to establish the validity ofits cause. However, it is also evident in the creation of new disciplines andfields of inquiry which often disorder and cause us to reorder academicdisciplines and professional practice.The sequence of fundamentalproblems that have shaped design inthe twentieth century demonstratesa coherent progression of practical in-


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DESIGN AND THE NEW RHETORIC M 1

quiry into the human-made world. The rhetorician may recognize in thefeatures of this progression an echo of the unfolding of rhetoric in ourtime. McKeon identified four fields of the new rhetoric in the philosophyof culture. He did so in the manner of a philosopher, suggesting the spansand arches in succinct descriptions that sometimes leave a casual readerpuzzled by where the ideas may lead. However, the discipline of designprovides a concrete example that is illuminated by rhetorical study and, inturn,may illuminate the new rhetoric.

Early in the twentieth century, the problems of design were identi-fied in two great areas of collective enterprise. The first area focused on"symbols andimages." Work in this areagave rise to the allied professionsof graphic design, using words and images for effective communication.The evolution of the term "graphic design" into "visual communication"and,mostrecently,"communicationdesign"indicates the field thatemerged.It was a field of demonstration or display, presenting expressions of cul-tural discourse that served diverse purposes in practical life, science, andart. The second area focused on "things." Work in this area gave rise toindustrialdesign and new developments of engineering design, where theproblems of conceiving and fabricating the physical artifacts of everydaylife have led to a field of construction, broadlyconceived. It was a field ofinterpretingand judging the physical world in the context of human cul-ture, assessing the factual basis for constructing viable products.Work inboth of these areas continues to yield a flood of good andbad productsthataffect all aspects of cultural life around the world.Within the last two decades, however, two new problem areas haveemergedwithrevolutionary mportance or design thinkingandprofessionalpractice. In addition to the first and second areas we now find a third areathat focuses on "action."Workin this area has led to the concept of inter-actiondesign as a new way to characterize he workof the designer. Thoughprompted by the development of digital technology, this area of designpromises to cause a rethinkingof all of the professions of design, the pro-cesses of product development in industry,and the role of design in cul-turallife. It shifts attentionaway from the productas a "thing"andfocuses,instead, on the product as a locus of action or activity, where the humanbeing is no longer regardedas a passive receiver of messages or an exter-nal entity caught in the workings of a product.In fact, when attentionshiftsto action, the designer is also concerned with the design of processes, ser-vices, and other structuredactivities, whetherthese activities are for prac-tical action, art and entertainment,or education. The central issues in this


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area of design are temporal sequence and dynamic connection, which beara close relationship to what McKeon refers to as the problem of delibera-tion, where the human being must consider the intelligible consequencesor results of action. It is no surprisethat this areahas emphasized "strate-gic planning," "informationdesign," "human-centereddesign," "partici-patory design," and "evaluation" as central concepts. They are allexpressions of a new concern for experience and action in design thinking,where the humanability to make meaningful connections among all of thefeatures of cultural life is the central resource.The fourth areais closely related to action, but it focuses on the "en-vironments andsystems"within which actions takeplace. This area is prop-erly described as the areaof "thought,"since it is fundamentallyconcernedwith the organizing idea or principles that operate behind environmentsand systems. Of course, systems thinking is nothing new today. Systemshave played an importantrole in engineering design at least from the nine-teenthcentury.What has changed is what designers mean by a system. Thefocus is no longer on material systems- systems of "things" but on hu-man systems, where there is an integration of information, physical arti-facts, and interactions in environments of living, working, playing, andlearning. However, designers also recognize that humanbeings experiencea system only in theirparticular nteractions andpersonal pathways throughthe system. By definition, a system is the totality of all that is contained,has been contained, and may yet be contained within it. We can never ex-perience this totality directly. In the designer's effort to create systems orenvironments and create them in such a way thathumanbeings can navi-gate their complexity- they also create symbols or representations thatattempt to express the idea or thought that is the organizing principle. Tothis end, they employ a "logo" or a diagramor a mathematical formula orsome other form of symbolization, seeking to express the unifying conceptof a system. The idea or thought thatorganizes a system or environmentisthe focus of design attention.Furthermore, he idea is not a given fact. It isa thesis, formed in the processes of communication among all of those whohave a stake in the outcome. For this reason, designers who work in thefourth field of design often regard themselves as facilitators of organiza-tional process. They organize conversations and debates about the valuesof a community and how those values may be implemented with produc-tive results. Indeed, one may argue that they are participatingin the cre-ation of a new form of dialectic, shaped by rhetorical means but directedtowardgeneral questions of value and principle.


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DESIGN AND THE NEW RHETORIC 2^3

The fourordersof design manifestedin symbols andimages, physi-cal artifacts, actions and activities, and environments or systems- repre-sent new fields of cultural study as well as professional practice. Theyillustratehow the issue of cause and action leads us to dissolve the bound-aries of old fields and disciplines and establish new ones that address cur-rent and emerging problems of cultural life. Rhetoricians may play a rolein this process by clarifying the intellectual transformation that lies at itscore. They may also be led to action, either participating directly in thepractical exploration of design or educating new generations of men andwomen who are more sensitive to the marks and signs of innovation indesign thinking and in the shape of emerging technology.Let us conclude by returningto an earlierquestion, "Isdesign a newform of rhetoric in a technological age?"A rhetorical study of design sug-gests many ways in which this may be the case. However, we should becautious in suggesting a simple identity. While there are grounds for see-ing in design a surprisingexpansion of rhetoric in new directions and ap-plications, a sophisticated rhetoricianwill also recognize the role of otherarts and disciplines in shaping design thinking. Indeed, a philosophicallyinformed study of the rhetorical dimensions of design would consider therole of grammar, ogic, anddialectic as well as various sciences- in shap-ing design as a field of practice and theoretical inquiry. Alternative artsand sciences have also received explicit attention in design studies, andtheir themes and devices have influenceddesign researchandpractice.Fromthe broadestrhetoricalperspective, design is a theme in the philosophy ofculture,open to new variationsin theory andpractice.The pluralismthatisinherent in the ecology of culture will continue. Nonetheless, the themesand devices of rhetoric have given greater coherence to the discipline ofdesign, and furtherrhetoricalstudies of design will advance the discipline.Properlyconceived, they may also contribute to our understandingof thephilosophy of technology. The philosophy of technology is a recent addi-tion to the domain of philosophy, andits inquiries are often shaped aroundexplorations of the material and cultural conditions of technology.36 Rhe-torical studies of design could help to reorient some of this work toward anew understandingof the role of human agency in shaping technologicaldevelopment.

While it is unwise to believe that we can reduce design to rhetoricinthe pluralism of culture, we may also reflect on the significance of designfor our understandingof rhetoric. McKeon has arguedthatrhetoric shouldonce again become a universal art in order to help us address new prob-


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lems and circumstances in culture. This implies, of course, that rhetoricsometimes decays into a specialization, as it has in different historical pe-riods, losing its significance as a liberal art. The prospect of rhetoric thatwe envision and that we believe is unfolding today will requirechanges inour way of thinking about theory, practice, and production. Perhaps con-sideration of design will help us to relate words and things in a new way,offering insight into the new universal rhetoric of our time.

School of DesignCarnegie Mellon University

Works citedBooth, Wayne C. 1970. "The Rhetorical Stance." In Now Don't Try to Reason with Me.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Borgmann, Albert. 1984. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philo-sophical Inquiry.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Buchanan, Richard. 1998. "Branzi's Dilemma: Design in Contemporary Culture."DesignIssues, vol. 14, no. 1. . 1989. "Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design

Practice." In Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism, ed. Victor Margolin. Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press. . 2000. "Design Research and the New Learning."In Researching Design: DesigningResearch, ed. Jonathan M. Woodham. London: London Design Council. . 1995. "Rhetoric, Humanism, and Design." In Discovering Design: Explorations inDesign Studies, eds. Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin. Chicago: University ofChicago Press. . 1995. "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking." In The Idea of Design, eds. VictorMargolin and Richard Buchanan. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPress.Buckley, Michael J., S. J. 1971. Motion and Motion's God. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.Bugiarello, George, and Dean B. Doner, eds. 1979. TheHistory and Philosophy of Technol-

ogy. Urbana:University of Illinois Press.Conley, Thomas M. 1990. Rhetoric in the European Tradition.Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press.Dewey, John. 1958. Art as Experience. New York:Capricorn Books. . 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York:Holt, Rinehartand Winston. . 1946. Philosophy of Education. Rpt., Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1958.Fleming, David. 1998 (summer). "Design Talk:Constructing the Object in Studio Conver-sation." Design Issues, vol. 14.Forty, Adrian. 1986. Objects of Desire: Design and Society from Wedgwoodto IBM. NewYork: Pantheon.Kaufer,David S., and Brian S. Butler. 1996. Rhetoric and the Arts of Design. Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum.Lanham,Richard A. 1993. The Electronic Word:Democracy, Technology,and the Arts. Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press.McCullough, Malcolm. 1996. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. Cambridge:Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.McKeon, Richard. 1987. Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery. Ed. MarkBackman.Woodbridge,CT: Ox Bow Press.


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Miller, CarolynR. 1990. "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says." InThe Rhetorical Turn:Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. HerbertW. Simon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Mitcham, Carl. 1994. Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering andPhilosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N. 1992 (fall). "Converging Perspectives: ProductDevelopment Re-search for the 1990s." Design Management Journal.Simon, Herbert A. 1969. The Sciences of theArtificial. Cambridge:Massachusetts Instituteof Technology Press.Woodham,JonathanM. 1997. Twentieth-CenturyDesign. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Notes1. This article is based on a paper presented at the thirtieth anniversary meeting of theRhetoric Society of America, "Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village," held in June1998. The ideas were also presented at the first Gordon Research Conference to focus ondesign, "Theoretical Foundations of Product Design and Manufacturability,"also held inJune 1998.2. RichardMcKeon, "Rhetoricin the Middle Ages," in Rhetoric: Essays in Invention andDiscovery, 121-66.3. Thomas M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition,304.4. A notable exception is Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word:Democracy, Tech-nology, and the Arts.5. McKeon,"The Uses of Rhetoricin a Technological Age: Architectonic ProductiveArts,"in Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery, 1-24.6. Both McKeon and HerbertA. Simon have argued,on different grounds, that a produc-tive science or science of the artificial should have a significant place in our culture. SeeSimon, The Sciences of the Artificial.7. Buchanan, "Rhetoric,Humanism, and Design," in Discovering Design: ExplorationsinDesignStudies,23-66.8. John Dewey, "Introduction:The Problems of Men and the Present State of Philoso-phy," in Philosophy of Education, 18. Also see "By Nature and by Art."9. For a discussion of the four scientific questions of Aristotle and the four rhetoricalquestions, see McKeon, "The Methods of Rhetoric and Philosophy: Invention and Judg-ment," in Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery, 56-65.10. For a valuable discussion of Cicero's use of the fourquestions, see Michael J. Buckley,S. J., Motion and Motion's God, 89-156.11 See Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: ThePracticed Digital Hand.12. WalterGropius, "My Conception of the Bauhaus Idea," quoted in Buchanan, "Rheto-ric, Humanism, and Design," 35.13. See George Bugiarello and Dean B. Doner, eds., TheHistory and Philosophy ofTech-noloev.14. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition,285-304.15. McKeon, "The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age, 11.16. Buchanan, "Design Research and the New Learning," in Researching Design: Design-ing Research.17. Aristotle's definition of rhetoric similarly identifies efficient, final, and formal causes,but treats the material cause in the phrase "with regardto any subject." In Aristotle's analy-sis, style is simply the material cause of a speech ratherthan the subject matteror materialcause of the art of rhetoric itself.18. For further discussion of this idea in the context of the ancient world, see Buchanan,"Rhetoric,Humanism, and Design," 31. Another variation of this theme occurs in David S.Kauferand Brian S. Butler, Rhetoric and the Arts of Design.19. E.g., David Fleming, "Design Talk:Constructingthe Object in Studio Conversation,"Design Issues, vol. 14 (summer 1998), 41-62.20. Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry,48.


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21. Dewey, Logic, 46.22. For a history of design in the context of mass consumption, see JonathanM. Woodham,Twentieth-CenturyDesign.23. Buchanan, "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking," in The Idea of Design, 3-20. Alsosee Buchanan, "Branzi's Dilemma: Design in Contemporary Culture,"Design Issues, vol.14, no. 1., 3-20.24. See Buchanan, "Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration inDesign Practice," n Design Discourse: History, Theory,Criticism,91-110. Also seeBuchanan, "Wicked Problems."25. E.g., Albert Borgmann, Technologyand the Character of Contemporary Life:A Philo-sophical Inquiry.26. See Buchanan, "Declaration by Design."27. Kantdescribes such a state as "disinterested interest." Cf. John Dewey, Art As Experi-ence, 35-67.28. The terms "useful," "usable," and "desirable" are employed in Elizabeth B.-N. Sand-ers, "Converging Perspectives: Product Development Research for the 1990s," Design Man-agement Journal (fall 1992), 49-54.29. WayneC. Booth, "The RhetoricalStance," in Now Don't Tryto Reason with Me, 25-33.30. Buchanan, "Rhetoric,Humanism, and Design."31. See Buchanan, "Wicked Problems."32. See CarolynR. Miller, "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or HerbertA. Simon Says,"in TheRhetorical Turn:Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, 162-84.33. Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire: Design and Society from Wedgwoodto IBM.34. For example, see the section on "Values and Responsibilities" in Buchanan andMargolin, eds., Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies.35. McKeon, "The Uses of Rhetoric," 17-18.36. See CarlMitcham, Thinking Through Technology:ThePath Between Engineering andPhilosophy.

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Design and New Rhetoric