In an earlier post, I discussed adolescence as a metaphor for HCI research.

One thing that’s especially cool about this metaphor is the way it inspires thinking about time increments and their implications for knowledge growth. For instance, we might not expect a discipline “in its adolescence” to have a substantial body of theoretical knowledge. Consider, for example, the way Kit Fine riffs on this idea in the abstract of his text, Mathematics: Discovery or Invention?

Mathematics has been the most successful and is the most mature of the sciences. Its first great master work – Euclid’s ‘Elements’ – which helped to establish the field and demonstrate the power of its methods, was written about 2400 years ago; and it served as a standard text in the mathematics curriculum well into the twentieth century. By contrast, the first comparable master work of physics – Newton’s Principia – was written 300 odd years ago. And the juvenile science of biology only got its first master work – Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ – a mere 150 years ago. 

A mere 150 years ago…!

One thing that’s especially cool about this is the different conception of time that arises when one sees the world from the perspective of a field or discipline. It becomes possible to see something 150 years old as an infant or toddler (not even an adolescent). And so HCI can be framed as a discipline not even close to its adolescence!

This is a crucial insight given that some researchers in HCI evaluate its theoretical adequacy as though the field is mature beyond its years.

In Making Social Science Matter, Bent Flyvbjerg examines the possibility that “the study of social phenomena is not, never has been, and probably never can be, scientific in the conventional meaning of the word science; that is, in its epistemic meaning,” and he explains why other fields tend toward such strong natural-scientific theoretical ambition. There is a logical simplicity to the natural science paradigm and the natural sciences have impressive material results.

Chapter Three, Is Theory Possible in Social Science, includes a brief exploration of the argument that natural science is “historically conditioned and requires hermeneutic interpretation” (p. 28). Flyvbjerg characterizes social science as “pre-paradigmatic” in the Kuhnian sense, which means that it “is in a state of constant reorganization, characterized by a multiplicity of directions” (p. 30). He then dispenses with the pre-paradigmatic argument that, with enough time, the social sciences can achieve the status of paradigmatic science.

Flyvbjerg argues that social science is no closer to achieving cumulative progress and that some natural sciences that are younger than social science already display such progress. He cites the hermeneutic/phenomenological argument. In social science, individuals and groups dialogue with researchers who themselves acknowledge the situatedness of their research activity. They are not separated from their subjects.

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