Leap before you look

Leap Before You Look

and

A Note on Interdisciplinarity

 

By

 

Murdo Macdonald

 

 

Leap Before You Look: towards a proper methodology of interdisciplinary research – with particular regard to the practice of fine art and design.[1]

I want to reflect here on the meaning of the words I have used in my title. In this effort two dictionaries have been particularly useful: Chambers Dictionary and Chambers Etymological Dictionary. Attention to etymology may seem ponderous but pondering is the point here. My aim is to ponder words from the perspective of a visual thinker.

I will get to ‘leap before you look’ in due course, but first I want to consider the word ‘towards’, which seems to imply a geography of thought. One follows a way towards something across something like a landscape. In cognitive terms, one moves through what Waddington (or following Waddington, Piaget) would have called an epigenetic landscape.[2] But you are not there yet. Indeed, I would want to develop Waddington’s view to suggest that in any developmental system (of thought, nature, or whatever), the direction of development may be more important than the goal, that is to say that the goal may be, at least in practice, illusory. Waddington called this organised developmental direction a ‘chreod’, that is to say a necessary path of development.[3] The fact that the word ‘chreod’ does not feature in dictionaries, including the OED,[4] tells us something about the way we fail to think about process.[5] So ‘towards’ suggests a direction across a landscape of thought, a notion both active and – as is so common even when we think we are at our most abstract – visual.[6]

‘Proper’ denotes ownership. Those who are asked to engage with a particular methodology will be happy with that methodology if it is a ‘proper’ one, owned from within the discipline, so to speak. Recognising such proper methodology is the foundation of peer review. Note that if a methodology has been imported from another discipline it may be, literally, ‘improper’ and there may be a case for disowning it. When working in an interdisciplinary context, the risk of such impropriety is high, for slipping a method across disciplinary boundaries may happen with little scrutiny and for what seem to be good reasons. This is not to imply that interdisciplinary transfer of methods cannot be very valuable, but the crucial point is that the transferred method must be recognised as appropriate within the discipline to which it is transferred (i.e. of which it is properly part), rather than imposed on it as part of a ‘one size fits all’ approach to methodology. Such sensitivity is essential to effective knowledge transfer but cultural power relations can lead to inappropriate transfer of methods. As Jacques Barzun noted, despite our ready recognition of art and science as constituting together the intellectual leadership of our civilization, ‘one power only, and that one science, dominates the culture’.[7] This can lead to scientism, that is to say an inappropriate imitation of scientific method to confer legitimacy. Scientism, by definition, does not allow ownership of the proposed methods within the discipline for which those methods are proposed. This is because the value of those methods for the scientistic thinker depends on the fact that those methods are owned elsewhere. Paradoxically, their value to the scientistic thinker depends on their not being owned within the discipline for which they are proposed. Non scientific activities find themselves stereotyped as inferior, indeed it is useful to illustrate this point by pointing out the analogy between scientism within academia and what Frantz Fanon called ‘inferiorism’ in a colonial context. Just as the scientistic thinker depends on the spurious authority of another discipline to give worth to his or her own discipline, the inferiorist thinker rejects the culture of his or her own place in favour of the culture of a colonial power. A distinctly ‘improper’ activity in either case.

As good a definition of ‘methodology’ as any, is that it is a system of methods and rules applicable to research or work in a given science or art.[8] There is little more to say, except to note that our word ‘methodology’ comes from three words of ancient Greek: meta, ‘among, with, beside, after’; hodos, ‘the way’,[9] and logos, loosely translated as ‘word’. From this perspective methodology is something like a verbal(ish) discourse (ology) beside (met) the way (hod). In one interpretation this seems to be making the point that (as Korzibsky pointed out) the map is not the territory,[10] the form of research is not the goal of research, the discourse is beside the way, not the way itself. From another point of view, this word ‘methodology’ seems more like a description of a peripatetic philosopher’s seminar, a sort of scholarly picnic at the roadside, rather than a simple set of rules for research. But perhaps that is equally relevant here, and we should allow that a methodology must be continuously refreshed through intellectual community, rather than by bureaucratic dictat.

‘Interdisciplinary’ is (almost) self-evident. It is defined as involving two or more fields of study. But its prefix ‘inter’ implies working between fields of study, which adds something of significance. The implication is of additional states of thinking, different from those inherent to the initial disciplines.[11] To illustrate the nature of interdisciplinarity, the generalist thinker George Davie paraphrases John Burnet as follows ‘the most important side of any department of knowledge is the side on which it comes into contact with every other department. To insist on this is the true function of humanism.’[12] This, of course, distinguishes it from multidisciplinarity, although one would expect that a multidisciplinary situation could become an interdisciplinary one. At first I had thought of interdisciplinary activities as able to be represented as a braid or a knot.^[13] These are valuable ways of looking at the issue, but a useful and less directive analogy is a material such as felt or peat: a substance that comes into being through a partially random collocation of fibres. In terms of chaos theory, one might think of something like a cloud of leaves falling from trees of different species. The result on the ground is a dynamic pattern generated by random events. The structuring provided by a project or an institution can be compared to the trees and the ground, that is to say the context that makes the patterning possible.

The word ‘research’ is fairly straightforward: ‘a careful search’ and also ‘investigation: systematic investigation towards increasing the sum of knowledge’. Note, however, that ‘knowledge’ is a broad notion, and should be respected as such: its definitions include: assured belief, information, enlightenment, learning, practical skill. Perhaps ‘knowledges’ is a more useful usage.

With particular regard to the practice of fine art and design

This second part of my title, ‘with particular regard to the practice of fine art and design’ focuses the first part with respect to two disciplines, namely fine art and design. What I have written about the first part has a general applicability whether one is a physicist or a furniture maker. Now I want to consider this ‘with particular regard to the practice of fine art and design’.

The word ‘particular’ seems very obvious, but it is worth thinking about. It does not mean isolated. It refers to considering something not on its own, but as a part of a greater whole. If we consider a ‘particular’ discipline like fine art or design by our use of the word, we imply the existence of all those other disciplines and activities we have not mentioned. ‘Particular’ thus implies pluralism, indeed holism. But it also implies the need to set aside the whole picture in order to consider a discipline in detail, from an expert perspective. Thus, if we bother to think about it, far from implying some sort of disciplinary isolation, the word ‘particular’ can lay the ground for the exercise of the interdisciplinary intellect.

‘Regard’ is interesting because, a bit like ‘towards’, it is one of those words that underpins our implicitly visual sense of knowledge. Instead of ‘with particular regard to’ I could have written ‘from the particular perspective of’. And, of course, ‘perspective’ is another of those visual-knowledge words that we take for granted. It is interesting to note this at a time when the direct value of visual thinking is still a matter of confusion to those who are not used to thinking in that mode (or, rather, are not used to admitting that they think in that mode). Even those who take this visual mode for granted as part of their own professional practice may not be confident in claiming for it, its proper place.

‘Theory’ is another of these visual knowledge words. ‘Theory’ implies the seeing of a problem  (Gr. thea, a view, horos, seeing). By contrast, ‘practice’ is something that you do, often physically (Gr. prassein: to do). Einstein is interesting here. He writes: ‘I should demand the introduction of compulsory practical work. Every pupil should learn some handicraft. He should be able to choose for himself which it is to be, but I should allow no one to grow up without having gained some technique, either as a joiner, bookbinder, locksmith, or member of any other trade, and without having delivered some useful product of his trade.’^[14] Such trained (i.e. practiced) visual thinking is fundamental to Einstein’s achievement, see, for example his 1921 lecture on visualising higher dimensional space, Geometry and Experience.[15]

Leap before you look

The routine juxtaposition of ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ must lead us to consider these words not just as contrasting but as complementary. ‘Theory’ implies not something done, but a speculative structure. Again, I repeat, a visual notion. Thus to look before you leap, is – literally – to theorise before you practice. However, you can also look back after you have leapt. This retrospective, explanatory phase is also, from an etymological perspective, theory. So ‘theory’ is another word that has its origins in the visual. It helps to make things evident. It is worth noting that if one’s research is practice led, this implies not that you should look before you leap, but rather that you should leap before you look, i.e. the theory aspect should be in large part retrospective rather than predictive. This notion of leaping before you look corresponds well to the actual experience of the creative process in art and design, that is to say it is strongly energised and directed, but eludes easy description until after the event.[16] ‘Leap before you look’ might be the motto of all practice led research. Patrick Geddes implied something similar in his motto ‘by creating we think’. The training in such methodology should depend first of all on being aware of how to make decisions about where to leap from, and secondly on how to look back on that leap in an informative and communicable way. Such a methodological approach thus complements but does not imitate the more familiar hypothetico-deductive method of the sciences.

The ‘fine’ part of ‘fine art’, is from Latin finis end, limit, (hence) acme, peak, height. ‘Fine’ is also given as a meaning of ‘pure’. It is interesting to reflect here on the analogy between the practice of fine art and the practice of pure mathematics for both are explicitly defined by contrast with their ‘applied’ areas. In each case that distinction is made in terms of the activity, art or mathematics, being undertaken with no practical purpose in mind. Equally in each case there is an assumption that what is done in fine art or pure mathematics is in some way relevant to the applied area. But note that this link may not be evident. It is not my intention to suggest that fine art and pure mathematics are the same thing. Clearly, they are not. But it is equally clear that they share far more than one might initially assume. Drawing on earlier work, I note that the fine artist creates thought patterns which are intended to be ambiguous, that is to say open to a variety of interpretations. By contrast the pure mathematician creates thought patterns which are intended to avoid ambiguity, that is to say that they are intended to be interpreted in only one way. [17] The difference between fine art and pure mathematics thus lies in the intended level of ambiguity of the interpretation of the pattern. Again, these notions seem to complement one another. ‘Art’ is from Latin ars, skill. So fine art can be thought of as implying a limit or a height of skill. The word mathematics can be traced back to the Indo-European bases that underlie ‘mind’ and ‘do’. So in both fine art and pure mathematics we have notions that imply some kind of doing in the purest possible way.

So much for fine art, but what of design? Does the designer leap before looking or look before leaping? The word design implies drawing up some kind of plan or sketch and then carrying it out, so the implication is that design differs from fine art in that the designer looks before leaping. And yet there are areas called ‘design’ which are very close to fine art and vice versa. The point must surely be that as one thinks more as a designer the forward planning becomes more important; as one thinks more as a fine artist the intuitive leap becomes salient. But to be good at either design or fine art, both cognitive processes (leap before look and look before leap) are needed. I would suggest that an understanding of these two processes can shed light on creativity in any discipline. And in both fine art and design (or any other discipline), where the two attitudes of ‘look before you leap’ and ‘leap before you look’ are not found within one person, they can be found in a collaboration.[18]

It is interesting that we speak – most of the time – of thinking as if it were visual and of understanding as if it were solid. For example ‘thinking as visual’ words include: speculate, perspective, regard, theory. The physical implication of understanding is clear from the word itself: under-standing, substance, hypostasis.

An ecology of mind [19]

It can be noted in conclusion that interdisciplinary approaches can be thought of as potentially ecological. By taking on board more information, they have more chance of attending to the habitat of matter and dimension, of language and image, of which we are part. Novalis wrote: ‘What is nature? An encyclopaedic, systematic index or plan of our spirit.’[20] Not mind interpreting nature, but mind and nature, as Gregory Bateson wrote.

That is all I have to say, except to note another line of approach well worth consideration with respect to all the issues I have discussed. This is the distinction drawn between activities which stem from the voice, as opposed to those which stem from the hand. That is – perhaps – to say those which find their origin in language as opposed to those that are predominantly iconic. Key work here has been done by the anthropologists Dennis and Barbara Tedlock.[21] That work has been complemented, from an art-historical perspective, by the work of Margaret Iversen.[22] The arts which stem from the voice have dominated what we take to be our knowledge in all areas.[23] As a visual artist by background and inclination, an art historian by profession and a psychologist by education, however much I may use words I am acutely aware of their limited scope. Or perhaps their infinite scope to seem to explain. It should be emphasised that this distinction does not imply separation of experience, indeed, it can be seen as a cognitive basis of interdisciplinarity. Tedlock and Tedlock embed their argument historically as follows:

‘There are moments in the Western tradition when the arts that stem from the voice may seem to be developing independently from those that stem from the hand, but in fact they have an ancient interrelationship that continues to reassert itself down to the present day [here they footnote Mario Praz]. In semiotic terms, the earliest visible signs are symbolic (or conventional) and indexical; if there are any icons here, they are diagrams rather than images [here they footnote a discussion of Peirce]. When images make their first appearance, in the late Palaeolithic, they are highly schematic: instead of taking the form of self-explanatory scenes from life, they seem to require completion by means of verbal interpretation, just as symbolic and indexical signs do. Leroi-Gourhan (1964: chap. 6) interprets both kinds of early graphic art as evidence for the development of “face-reading” and “hand-writing” skills, which directly interrelate the domains of language and technology. In this broadened sense, reading and writing predate the development of literacy in the strict sense by many thousands of years [here they footnote Ong, Derrida, and Leroi-Gourhan].’[24]

A‘broadened sense’ indeed. I am reminded of Polya’s comment about the relationship of specific and general:

‘The more ambitious plan may have more chance of success. This sounds paradoxical, yet when passing from one problem to another, we may often observe that the new problem is easier to handle than the original problem. More questions may be easier to answer than one question. The more comprehensive theorem may be easier to prove, the more general problem may be easier to solve.’[25]

Perhaps that is the real lesson for interdisciplinary research: more questions may be easier to answer than one.

 

 

A Note on Interdisciplinarity.[26]

 

Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality.[27]

My team and I chose the most populist, if not popular, genre in film history – the Hong Kong martial arts film – to tell our story, and we used this pop genre almost as a kind of a research instrument to explore the legacy of classical Chinese culture. We embraced the most mass of all art forms and mixed it with the highest – the secret martial arts as passed down over time in the great Taoist schools of training and of thought.[28]

 

 

Leonardo da Vinci may have been unique but his interdisciplinarity was not. There is a tradition of interdisciplinarity to which we should attend. One of the great representatives of this tradition was the seventeenth century Moravian educator Jan Amos Comenius.

Comenius wrote: ‘We see that the branches of a tree cannot live unless they all alike suck their juices from a common trunk with common roots. And can we hope that the branches of wisdom can be torn asunder with safety to their life, that is to truth? Can one be a natural philosopher who is not also a metaphysician? or an ethical thinker who does not know something of physical science? or a logician who has no knowledge of real matters? or a theologian, a jurisconsult, or a physician who is not all these at once? He deprives himself of light, of hand and regulation, who pushes away from him any shred of the knowable.’^[29]

One can note also that Comenius pioneered communicating through images for the modern period in his great school book Orbis Pictus, published in 1657. His interdisciplinary work comes down to us in the English speaking world through the work of two Edinburgh academics in the nineteenth century, David Masson and Simon Somerville Laurie. Today we remember their generalist views through that defence of the interdisciplinary ethos, The Democratic Intellect, by George Davie. Davie followed this in 1986 with The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect. I quote from the latter: ‘the most important side of any department of knowledge is the side on which it comes into contact with every other department. To insist on this is the true function of humanism.’[30] Here Davie is paraphrasing John Burnet, professor of Greek at St Andrews University in the early part of the twentieth century. When Einstein noted that ‘it is not enough to teach a man a specialty’, he was exploring this same ground.[31] Davie explores a central tenet of interdisciplinary educational philosophy, namely that, as a matter of course, one area of thought or expertise is open to illumination by another and vice versa. Such possibilities of mutual illumination should be fundamental to the ethos of any body which styles itself a university. Davie’s point is that the advantage of the narrow focus of the specialist is that it creates detailed perception of a problem. But it also creates blindspots, eddies of ignorance in epistemological space, which can only be perceived from another perspective. This is interesting from our perspective here because it shifts the emphasis of interdisciplinarity from the purloining of other disciplines’ methods in the hope that you can apply them within your own discipline,  to illuminating, by the methods of one’s own discipline, what those other disciplines may be methodologically unable to access. This approach to knowledge also implies that it is inappropriate to attempt to reduce one area of thought to the modes of expression of another. This anti-reductionist stance – far from implying that because of an apparent incommensurability disciplines should be kept apart – instead creates the opportunity of juxtaposing them for mutual illumination. Thus difference is seen as a starting point for interdisciplinarity, not as a stumbling block to communication.

But how can we foster such interdisciplinarity? How can one trained person, or group of persons, make a difference to the practice of another person, or group of persons, trained in a different discipline? This is an old issue. One might argue that it is the issue that the college structures of our oldest universities was intended to address. But it has become more salient as an issue as detailed accounting for time and space within higher education has removed common, flexible spaces, in which non-programmed communication could take place. Common spaces have gone. Common times have gone. As these common spaces and times have disappeared, interdisciplinarity has emerged as an issue. But maybe there is a wider correlation between increasing specialisation and increasing consciousness of the need to be general. For example, in the 1960s C. P. Snow felt the need to invent the two cultures debate. Lack of interdisciplinarity had suddenly become salient, an emergent property of an over-specialised modernism. A characteristic of such salient cultural problems is that many people are interested in them, but funding tends to be sporadic; and dissemination, however immediately noticeable, does not enter the mainstream curriculum. As a result, any research that is done disappears quite quickly as publishers realign their lists in more profitable directions; and each new generation of interdisciplinary researchers feels that it must be the first. As one of those eternally-recurrent researchers, I spent a number of years studying inderdisciplinarity by making cognitive distinctions between different domains of thinking.^[32] That was informative from a classificatory perspective but had few lessons for the establishment of interdisciplinary research. My current view of such research, which owes much to working with the visual anthropologists Tim Ingold and Wendy Gunn, is that interdisciplinary working can be illuminated by some idea like chaos theory.^[33] Interdisciplinary working is responsive to random events which may reshape outcomes. It has a broad direction but resists predictability. But I don’t find ‘chaos’ a satisfactory word here. A better description for this process is the word ‘stochastic’.

The anthropologist Gregory Bateson gives the following definition of ‘stochastic’ in his remarkable book Mind and Nature :

‘Stochastic. (Greek, stochazein, to shoot with a bow at a target; that is, to scatter events in a partially random manner, some of which achieve a preferred outcome). If a sequence of events combines a random component with a selective process so that only certain outcomes of the random are allowed to endure, that sequence is said to be stochastic.’

In order to make such a stochastic situation possible for the development of interdisciplinary research, many factors are required but I think one is crucial and that factor is physical proximity: key people, at key times must be in the same place for long enough. If you already know what you want to explore in some detail (i.e. if the research path is well-trodden) such proximity is less important. However if you are working in a truly interdisciplinary manner, that is to say recognising that you do not fully understand one another’s disciplines, proximity is essential. This is, of course, obvious. But the obvious tends to be important and, paradoxically, due to its very obviousness it may not be high on any agenda, as the progressive removal since the 1980s of common spaces and times in institutes of higher education, indicates.

 

 

 

 

Murdo Macdonald is Professor of History of Scottish Art at the University of Dundee.

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[1] This paper stems from a collaboration between the School of Fine Art at the University of Dundee and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. The project’s title was ‘Learning is understanding in practice: exploring the inter-relationships of creativity, perception and skill’. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board from 2002 to 2005. I also have a debt to insights gained from Gavin Renwick and Norman Shaw, both of whom I supervised until 2003 in their practice-led PhD work in the School of Fine Art.

[2] Epigenesis is the theory that development consists of the gradual production and organisation of parts. Epi upon, after, genesis, formation.

[3] For a consideration of the epigenetic landscape that includes the derivation of ‘chreod’ (or as Waddington first spelled it ‘chreode’) see Waddington, C. H., (1957) The Strategy of the Genes, London: George Allen and Unwin, pp. 26-36. Also his selected papers, Waddington, C. H., (1975) The Evolution of an Evolutionist, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, for example ‘A Catastrophe Theory of Evolution’ (pp.253-266). A worthwhile popular introduction is Waddington, C. H., (1977) Tools for Thought, London: Cape, pp. 105-7; for the impact of Waddington on the thinking of developmental psychologists, see Piaget, J., (1971) Structuralism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, p. 49. Also Bower, T. G. R., (1974) Development in Infancy, San Francisco: Freeman. This gives a concise description of an epigenetic landscape in a psychological context, pp.145-6. Note also that Waddington, a scientist who insisted on the importance of visual thinking, wrote an exceptionally interesting account of modernist art, Waddington, C. H., (1969) Behind Appearance: a Study of the Relations between Painting and Natural Sciences in this Century, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

[4] I have noted this to the OED editors.

[5] Cf. David Bohm’s comment: ‘the ecological problem is due to the way we think’. This is from an interview in Papadakis, A., Wijers, L. & Pijnappel, J. (1990) Art meets Science and Spirituality, London: Academy Editions, p. 32.

[6] Not ‘the’ direction but ‘a’ direction. To give ‘the’ direction would be to invite reductionism. To give ‘a’ direction invites interdisciplinarity.

[7] Jacques Barzun, Science: The Glorious Entertainment, (1964).

[8] As noted in my first paragraph, I take my guidance on definition and etymology from Chambers Dictionary and Chambers Etymological Dictionary.

[9] Note that this is the same ‘hodos’ to be found in ‘chreod’.

[10] Cf, Gregory Bateson, (1979) Mind and Nature, London: Wildwood House, p. 30.

[11] Thus it is contrasted with multidisciplinarity, which describes no more than a collection of disciplines united in the pursuit of a single goal.

[12] Davie 1986 xxxxx

[13] Consider thread, yarn, twine: three modes of linking [intra-, inter-]; binding, double-binding. The non-chaotic analogies of braiding and knotting come in when a sub-group begins to work on a specific problem.

[14] Albert Einstein, quote to be found in margin of page 201 of French, A.P., ed., (1979) Einstein: A Centenary Volume, London: Heinemann.

[15] Reprinted in French, op. cit. pp294-297.

[16] This does not only apply to the arts as practised; consider Freud’s develop just such a retrospective (retrodictive) methodology?

[17] See, e.g., Murdo Macdonald, (1989)‘A Pattern of Thought’, Alba, Spring 1989, 15-17.

[18] Note that ‘attitude’ is another useful visual knowledge word.

[19] See Gregory Bateson (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Ballantine;   cf Liam Hudson (1970) The Ecology of Human Intelligence, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

[20] In contrast, William Blake suggests that nature has no outline, but imagination has.

[21] Tedlock, B. & Tedlock, D. (1985) ‘Text and Textile: Language and Technology in the Arts of the Quiché Maya’, J. of Anthropological Research, Vol. 41, No. 2, 121-146. My thanks to Wendy Gunn and Tim Ingold for drawing my attention to this.

[22] See, for example, Iversen, M., (1986) ‘Sassure versus Peirce: Models for a Semiotics of Visual Art’ in A.L. Rees & F. Borzello (1986) The New Art History, London: Camden Press.

[23] At least in the Western world since the Enlightenment.

[24] Tedlock & Tedlock (1985:121)

[25] G.Polya, (1957) How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, 2e, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 121.

[26] This paper has its origins in the seminars of the AHRC-funded ‘Learning is Understanding in Practice’ project, 2002-2005. The ideas were further explored at the Future Academy Symposium: With or Without Buildings? at Edinburgh College of Art in February 2005 under the title ‘A Broadened Sense’. Subsequent exploration included a position paper, ‘In the beginning was the word: how very convenient!’ for the Glasgow consultation meeting for the AHRC Beyond Text funding stream in March 2007, and as part of the Durham University Institute for Advance Study workshop, Can interdisciplinary research produce ‘good’ knowledge? in September 2007.

[27] Gregory Bateson, (1979) Mind and Nature, London: Wildwood House, 8.

[28] From: Ang Lee, Director’s Statement – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, (Curzon Cinemas Programme Notes, January, 2001).

[29] Quoted by David Masson in his monumental Life of Milton, Vol. 3, London: Macmillan, 1859-94,  213-4. My immediate source is R. H. Quick’s adoption of the quote from Masson in his Essays on Educational Reformers, London: Longmans, 157-158, published in 1907.

[30] Davie, G. E., (1986) The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh: Polygon, 15. See also, Davie, G. E., (1961) The Democratic Intellect, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

[31] Albert Einstein, New York Times, October 5, 1952. Reprinted in Einstein, A., (1954) Ideas and Opinions, New York: Bonanza Books, 66-7.

[32] This work is detailed in (i) A Basis for Library Design. Edinburgh Architecture Research.  Vol. 12, 104-13 (1985); (ii) A Model of the Relationships between Art and Science. Edinburgh Review. Issue 71, 81-9 (1985); (iii) Birth Order, Art and Science: A Study of Ways of Thinking. PhD Thesis, Univ. of Edinburgh (1986); (iv) Types of Thinking. Common Sense. No. 1, 22-5 (1987); (v) ‘A Pattern of Thought’, Alba, Spring 1989, 15-17. See also ‘Towards an Ecology of Art and Science’ in Murdo Macdonald and James Leach (2005) Two Papers about Art and Science, Creativity and Practice Research Papers, Visual Research Centre, University Dundee, pp. 2-10.

[33] Learning is understanding in practice: exploring the interrelations between perception, creativity and skill. Funded by AHRB, 2002-2005.

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