One Domain Divided in Twain: Ontological Perspectives of Design Expressed via Classification

摘要

As invisible information infrastructures, classifications shape our lives and work in ways we may never realize. This article helps surface some of the ways two of the most widely used library classifications shape epistemological and ontological perspectives of design. It perpetuates the duality between form and function, rather than the intellectual consolidation that has been a recent trend in design. It perpetuates the idea that design is an applied field-and nothing but. It positions design as atheoretical, which readers of Design Issues know it is not.