druk w: Ergonomia. An International Journal of Ergonomics and Human Factors,  2006, vol. 28, No.2

janusz krupiński

The Humanistic Threshold in Man-object Relations,

- a Limit of Ergonomics/Design

My interest in philosophy of ergonomics derives from studies in design philosophy. Design (I mean: apparel design, architectural design, graphic design, interior design, product design etc.) determines objects considering their interactions with people. Although design refers not only to such very ergonomic criterions like efficiency, safety or comfort, nevertheless design seems to be just a proper field of application of this “applied science” which ergonomics is.

A tautology: Every design (of clothes, buildings, signs or vehicles) is an ergonomic design, to the extent where the field of design and the field of ergonomics overlap.

What ergonomics is?

But… Is ergonomics anything more than a label? Has it an identity?

Some definitions of ergonomics go so far to declare that it deals with all possible man-object relations. What kind of relations? The “imperialistic” all-answer is: Whatever, (geo)metric, physical (e.g. mechanical), chemical, biological (e.g. physiological), psychic, etc. X-ic, or x-cal. In the place of “x” put the name of a science or discipline… This “imperialistic” concept of ergonomics turns out to be the annihilation of ergonomics itself: Ergonomics would be nothing more that a part of a science/discipline applied to describe or explain mans relations to objects. It means: a part of a science describing or explaining mans relations to objects.

Does the term “interdisciplinary” make any difference? What really new occurs “inter”, or between the disciplines dealing with man-object relations?

If you curb the scope of  ergonomics to man-artifact relations, farther: to man-implement relation, to working man etc. – it makes no difference. The autonomy of ergonomics is denied. Ergonomics is simply nothing more than a label given to some specializations of genuine sciences/disciplines). It is not the question of reduction or reductionism. It is the question of existence. Why the label “ergonomics” cannot be wiped out? For the word “ergonomic” refers to an important mix of efficiency, safety or comfort which features objects of our use?

The subject matter

Let us discuss the realm for which ergonomics (and design alike) claims its competence: man-object relations. When a relation of this kind is getting humanistic type? When man involved, engaged in a relation with the object acts as a man, as a Man, as a homo humanum, not merely as a human animal (while as an physical, chemical or biological thing man does not act at all)?

Every real philosophy of ergonomics/design must face those question. Dear reader, you are left to yourself to derive some consequences for your understanding of ergonomics/design. I am going to concentrate this essay on the humanistic threshold in man-object relations.

Humanistic threshold

I take up the question of humanistic character of man-object relations. An answer to it belongs to  the foundations of ergonomics and design as well. It determines the way in which ergonomics/design is understood and practised. It is one of the most important problems of the philosophy of ergonomics/design (of the philosophy of design - and it is of no importance whether it is understood as a philosophical theory of design or as a set of fundamental rules lying at the base of the projects of the designer himself).

At the very beginning I want to stress that the sense of the word "humanistic" I link to the humanities - the humanistic “sciences” and the peculiarities of the domain of their research,  but not humanism. Even more, I do not equate "humanistic" with "humane".

The phrase "human engineering " (also called ergonomics) comes in to our mind. In respect to this term I also must  stress that the qualification "human" in no way means that we are on the humanistic level. Likewise, not every discipline (“science”) whose subject is human being is a humanistic science, even psychology and sociology need not to be.

Therefore as far as a human being is a natural being, subordinated to the laws of nature, and not a cultural being, there is no question of the humanities.

If the domain of ergonomics/design in its basic foundations could be described in the natural categories, then ergonomics design would be another form of science/engineering.

The question about the humanistic threshold in man-object relation is, on the one hand a question about the moment when an object becomes a cultural one, that is when and how it transgresses its natural material structure, and on the other hand it is a question about the moment when a man becomes and is a human being in its full, proper and true meaning of this word (homo humanum). Whether he is only a physical, chemical, biological, physiological, psychical or social creature, as any animal, or something more.

In so far as a man is not a zoological category we can speak about transgressing the humanistic threshold.

Anthropic relation

In this part particular emphasis will be placed on subjective and imaginal character of cultural objects. Culture is the realm of subjectivity and imaginativeness.

I begin with a banal distinction between something as it is and something as it seems to somebody it is. In particular we distinguish between a thing as it is when nobody experiences it, when nobody sees it or touches it, and somebody's ideas about this thing, when he or she experiences it, sees it or feels it.

A thing such as it reveals itself to somebody who experiences it, that what it is to somebody, a thing in his experience, we call an object. It is in the nature of an object to exist for some subject.

These simple remarks lead us to the very core of the problem of the domain of culture. Who can negate that culture embraces relations between things and people, between things and a human being.

I assert that culture appears on the level "it seems". In opposition to engineering, or (applied) sciences, culture studies does not deal with things but they are concerned with what the things seem to be, how they are imagined or experienced, as they appear to be, as they reveal themselves to somebody. Generalising: what their image is.

Hence, design is not concerned with things as they are but with objects. Objects as objects, as determined by subjects. Design is not concerned with things as they are but with their images.

Subjectivity is the element of culture. An object is not only defined by its material and structure, that is the thing that is its carrier and its basis, but also by the subject. From that point of view a thing seems to be something. Every object us such is cultural one: it is what it seems to by for somebody, made by his/her experience. It is due to his/her mental acts present in his/her perception of a thing.

In as much as the point of view accepted by the man is determined by ideas - some values, principles, theories, concepts, beliefs or myths - and these (values, principles or theories) cannot be reduced to some natural features of the man, such as, for example, genes, instincts, desires or preferences, we can speak about a transgression of the humanistic threshold.

Therefore it means that not all relations between a man and an object belong to the humanistic level. I call the anthropic relations these which do belong. I repeat, such a relation of a man with an object has an anthropic character, if it is determined by a man's attitude, his point of view, and further by ideas.

I call an anthropic metarelation not an anthropic relation itself, a relation between a man and an object, but a relation to this relation, an attitude of a man towards this which occurs between him and an object. This metarelation is strictly, purely anthropic one. On this level human being reveals its freedom: whatever happens to us it is up to us to take a stance on the happening.

Humanum, a humanistic interpretation of an object

With the subject side of an anthropic relation closely corresponds the object side.

Every cultural object as such, saying more pointedly, a humanum, that is a human object, carries in itself some assumptions or consequences which can be revealed in it by a humanistic interpretation.

A humanistic interpretation of an object discloses its subjectivity, that is it presents the object from the point of view of the subject, from the point of view of its (even potential) "user", "consumer", of a man who enters (would enter) with this object into a relation. This interpretation reveals "subjective conditions of the possibilities of an object".

In this humanistic interpretation of an object are included, in particular, the ideatic interpretation and the anthropological interpretation (by “ideatic" I mean "related to ideas").

The ideatic interpretation of an object reveals ideas, which "stand behind it" - that is beliefs, superstitions, representations, symbols or theories which define somebody's point of view, his attitudes. The axiological interpretation constitutes a particular case of the ideatic interpretation: it reveals values (and most probably reaches the deepest, as some systems of values are hidden in beliefs, representations or symbols).

The anthropological interpretation of an object reveals the understanding of the human nature which is behind the object or contained in it. Obviously, an object is measured against the human nature understood in this or that sense (but it does not mean, independently of the way in which the human nature is understood, that "a human being is the measure of all things").

Who climbs to this level undertakes an attempt to realize humanistic, that is ideatic, axiological or anthropological assumptions of cultural objects and then to discuss them.

Any design of objects makes such assumptions, they form its project, they form the project of its projects. Sometimes a designer is aware of these assumptions, but generally he is not aware of their assumptive character, that is he does not realize that they are only assumptions. In his naiveté he takes them for obviousness. He does not take into consideration that everything can be done differently. Unconsciously he makes an absolute truth out of his point of view.

„The sense of humanity”

A story of Kant’s last days could be very interesting in the context where comfort, safety and efficiency are concerned. Where a seats and sitting postures make the case:

Nine days before his death Immanuel Kant was visited by his physician. Old, ill and nearly blind, he rose from his chair and stood trembling with weakness and muttering unintelligible words. Finally his faithful companion realized thathe would not sit down again until the visitor had taken a seat. This he did, and Kan then permitted himself to be helped to his chair and, after having regained some of his strength, said, ‘Das Gefühl für Humanität hat mich noch nicht verlassen’ – ‘The sense of humanity has not yet left me’.  (E. Panofsky).

Where was the gravity of this situation? Notice: a chair was a part of the story, built a stage o this dramatic scene. At the center was the meeting of two men (man-man relation). The chair was not the subject of their focal consciousness. Its presence – background precence.

Art historian, Erwin Panofsky, who recalls this event from the biography of great philosopher (I quote Panofsky’s “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline”) points, that the word Humanität refers to “man’s proud and tragic consciousness of self-approved and self-imposed principles, contrasting with his utter subjection to illness, decay and all that is implied in word ‘mortality’”. I would say: in word “nature”.

From this perspective man’s position is defined by a between. Below: nature. Above: principles, values – ideas. “Where to turn”? Man is free to decide. Even to be blind to his between-position (e.g. blind to the mere concept of ideas, what happens when someone’s eyes blind with naturalism).

On the humanistic/cultural level criteria like efficiency, safety or comfort fail. A case in point is Kant’s stance. The mentality/discipline based on such criteria is not capable to comprehend a man attitude towards other humans which is not instrumental one.

The efficiency-safety-comfort rationality has no sense of humanity, it would find Kant’s attitude us such irrational and non-sense or would instrumentalize it: would try to find its “hidden” functions.

Kant’s case shows the meaning of man-man relations as primary, superior to man-objects relations. A sense of object used by men is secondary, derivative of the dramaturgical relation, when a man meets a man.

Man - a Dramaturgical Being

However, the human nature is not fulfilled in relations with objects. A human being in a man becomes a human being in relation to another man, to Somebody. Usually this relation, between Me and You, this dramaturgical relation, demands the presence of some objects, and sometimes these objects are the cause of such a relation. But notice that these objects find their reason of existence and of their form in this relation but not the other way round.

An object, which does not open you towards another man is immoral and therefore any cult of objects is immoral.  It is the case of any purely aesthetic attitude which finds its expression in lonely, "desert-island" expositions of objects either on pedestals or in photographic frames (see books on the history of design), expositions which take an object out of its life context and change it into a work for "art's sake".

Landscapes, parks and gardens, buildings and implements form the space of the drama of life, of  relations of a man with another man. But first of all of a man with a given individual human being, then perhaps with a group, but newer with somebody who is an element of a throng, masses or community and even less with such abstract notions as the society, nation, class, population or people. Therefore a dramaturgical relation is not a "social" relation and it does not fall within the domain of sociology which is used to "macro"-scale formulations.

Objects find the justification of their existence in the participation in the  creation of the space of  dramaturgical relations. And this space finds its justification in the essence of humanity: a man is a dramaturgical being  - it appears in a relation with some You, in his glances... As a phenomenon, as an image, as a being equally transient.

Most often the dehumanization of ergonomics/design consists in the reduction of all forms of the human activity to the level of instrumental actions. Then every  object is treated as a machine, an instrument to engender predetermined states of things or of human beings.

Dramaturgical action. What is the essence of this form of human activity? Well, the dramaturgical action consists in that that an acting Me appears in meeting with another human being, in his glance. "It appears" - in this case means nothing more than "it becomes"! Contrary to that what is usually told about the dramaturgical action (E. Goffman), it is not a process in which somebody hides something or reveals something of his Me; it does not consists in disclosing his inner feelings but in becoming of Me in relations with another human beings. Always some You is the condition of some possibilities of my Me.

Who thinks object-like and reduces any object to its material structure such categories as "symbol", "cultural context", "situation", "atmosphere", "mood", "expression", "ceremony" or "sacredness" would be alien.

Revealing himself  Me presents himself as an image. The image that Me imprints in the eyes of his You can be co-produced by objects: clothes, utensils, interior. By these manifold elements of the theatre of common life.

Where does a sense appear? First of on there where appearance takes place, in mere appearing of a human being. The appearance is of substance. The dramaturgical being fulfils on the level of appearing.

Therefore  the basic unit of life which carries the sense is not a single object or a set of such objects which form a stage on which people surrender themselves  to this or that activity, it is not the dramaturgical action itself of a single "actor", but whole situations, episodes, and scenes in which everything (objects, people, actions) is intertwined.

(pisane w języku angielskim)