The phrase, “the scales fall from one’s eyes,” is derived from a passage in the New Testament, Acts 9:18. The phrase means that things suddenly become clear and comprehensible to someone. In both design and science, ideas emanate from gaining insights of suggestions from others. Individuals perceive things and its truth better by noticing and embodying.

The theme of “DESIGN SCIENCE_02,” which proclaims that “Design is Science,” is “Peace and Design.” While design, science, and technology promote peace, do they also introduce chaos in the world? What is peace, anyway? What does it mean to know one’s self?

The global crisis, especially wars, is viewed as a “question” for design x science, and investigates the “place of awareness” for design and science to contribute to peace.

“World 3 has been destroyed. Japanese people may not even be confident that there is even a world of ‘their own mind’ already. Hence, they cannot feel their own value unless they are recognized by someone other than themselves. This is especially true for young people. They are not convinced that there are originally three worlds.” (Takeshi Yoro)

Karl Popper, a 20th-century philosopher of science, advocated the “three-world theory” that divides the world into three categories. World 1 is the world of matter. World 2 is the world of language, logic, etc.—, which is applicable to everyone. World 3 is the world in the mind of the individual, which is not always applicable to everyone. In the present era, World 2 is extremely bloated—social networking sites are typical of phenomena belonging to World 2.

The interlocutor discussed from the perspective of Popper’s three-worlds theory: the senses, body, nature and artifacts, invention of the function of “equals”—an inherent feature of human consciousness overlooked by philosophy, and “theory of mind” in cognitive science. This dialogue reveals, conveniently and profoundly, the significance of the “everyday life,” the pitfalls of our contemporary life, and the position, function, and power of design/creativity.

The choice of typeface, letter spacing, printing method, color, paper quality, and feel in the author’s business-card design—these were topics expressed in an email from designer Hideki Nakajima. The author writes that she “read this email so much that she had it memorized.” This is because she also wrote, “This email is to me what ‘design’ is all about.”

Next, the author narrates her experience of visiting Europe for the first time: “The first time I went to Europe, it was to Milan, Italy, and I thought, ‘Oh? My eyes don’t get tired. Is it because when I am in Japan, I can see and understand the Japanese characters?’ I wondered. But it wasn’t. It was simply because everything I saw was beautiful. Even the dingy places are easy on the eyes. I was moved to realize that this is a city of people who have lived their lives centered on beauty.”

“Beauty in chaos, even though I know how advanced it is, I want to go step by step towards a perfection that I will never reach, without going against my own soul.” These words demonstrate the irreplaceable power of design, which directly impacts one’s overall quality of life.

“Design is the overall process of planning and arranging an action toward a desired and predictable goal.” (Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World). This is an appropriate definition for the design of weapons and warfare. The author suggests that war and design collaborate well. “How about ‘peace and design’ in turn? Can peace be considered in perspective of planning and arranging towards a desirable and foreseeable goal?,” the author asks.

Hanamori Yasuji, the founder of “Kurashi no Techo,” wrote that he found the duralumin fuselage of the B-29 beautiful, and also perceived the ugliness of the concrete piles, which imitated stumps, in “peaceful parks.” Unlike war and weapons, the design of peace is difficult to define with a definite goal; it may degenerate into a sham design.

Nevertheless, there are possibilities in the design of peace, however it is a daunting process of confronting, one by one, the challenges which are not always evident or explicit. For example, everyday small choices, a mindset of valuing daily life, social ties, mutual understanding, and trust.

The design of peace, its pitfalls, and possibilities are backlit by the design of war.

The author says that what we should derive from Karel Čapek’s play, “R. U. R.,” which depicts the human–robot discord, is not the threat of robots but “the tragicomedy about humans losing their sanity and the survivors trying to keep their sanity.” He poses the following question: “How would sanity relate to robots?”

The author looks beyond the current soft robotics research to incorporate the “proprioception” of humans into robots. He is currently working on an “inflatable robot,” with an inflatable structure that has a balloon-like body with an air-supported membrane from the inside.

“I wish to entertain and inspire those who see and touch these robots. I wish to be an affective presence. But in many cases, emotion destroys sanity. So, we should have ‘a sense of self-emotional acceptance,’ separate from our proprioception… . It will be necessary to recognize one’s own emotions, as humanistic feelings sometimes endanger one’s sanity. A soft robot will be with those who try to do so.”

The author opines that in a broad sense, robots are “the children of humans,” and a few people believe that they are human beings with the personality of a robot. This essay, by an author at the forefront of robotics research, evokes a novel perspective about robots, the human–robot relationship, and human sanity—the basis of peace.

The lightsaber, a sword of light emerging from nothingness, is held by the Jedi knights in Star Wars. W. J. Ong’s Orality and Literacy elucidated that letters and literacy are the technologies that afford humans abstract and structured modes of thought. In Ted Chang’s novel Exhalation, the protagonist, which is a mechanical life form, discovers that its own brain and source of life are driven by air pressure and realizes that it is doomed as the universe attains equilibrium.

“By continuing to precisely describe the diverse behaviors brought about by certain properties, a certain order emerges. The simplicity of the internal logic that penetrates the system, and the complexity of the phenomena that emerge from it─the contrast between the two makes us intuit what is ‘natural’ to us, and gives it a strange familiarity, doesn’t it?” The author, who is also a computer programmer, discusses the creative principle of “Imaginary Nature”—an output with unique subtlety and familiarity that he grasped in the process of ordering the imagination through code—and a new eye that re-observes our daily lives from a different perspective.

“I find myself reflecting on the need to broaden the scope of our practice from designing exclusively for the benefit of human beings to designing inclusively for the mutual benefit of other living things. Rather than an exclusively human-centered design, this new frontier might be better described as life-centered design─.”

The author mentions that human science and design seemed to inhabit different worlds during the 1980s. Then, as “fundamental activities shared by design and science,” she lists: an attitude of humility, curiosity to look deeply and reflect upon what we see, direct feeling through experience, and ability to empathize with each other. In this context, the author argues that we have to move beyond “human-centered design” to address the many pressing challenges facing humanity and the planet, and address new insights such as affordance, biomimicry, and synthetic biology.

“But it is the simple, everyday examples of design that move me the most,” the author says. The photo the author includes as a “thoughtful act of mutualism” is of a cardboard shelf on the roof section of the Kamakura station. An improvised cardboard shelf serves both to protect passengers from bird droppings and catch clumsy fledglings who might otherwise fall onto the hard ground.

From human-centered design to life-centered design─. The author, who has been involved in design work for 40 years, proposes, “Design for the Future/The Future of Design.”

Knapping is a relatively straightforward technique of hitting one stone with another to create a controlled breakage, progressively shaping a stone into a tool. This has been the core stone tool-making technique for the past three million years. During a visit to the Negev Desert in southern Israel, the author read about numerous human historical events regarding stone tools.

Nature Connectedness and Biophilia Hypnosis highlight humans’ innate tendency to seek connections with nature and life, and to conscientiously hold that evolved tendency as identity. A stronger association with nature is correlated with an individual’s improved well-being. Knapping is probably one of our longest-standing means of reaching a state of flow—the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, absolute engagement, and enjoyment of the process. Flow is likely a shared mental state between contemporary knappers and their ancestors. The phenomenon of “symmetrization” of the hand axe may be linked to the development of aesthetic senses and to mating and courtship—far beyond its original use for removing bone from meat. It is the beginning of a real example of a medium for communicating ideas. Stone structures made of stone that we are accustomed to seeing in Israel are not necessarily products of nature; they are the result of erosion of traces that were artificially quarried by humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. The “Anthropocene” supposedly began with the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago. However, evidence of large-scale changes in the landscape because of quarrying, such as in the Messec Settafet region of central Sahara, suggests that the Anthropocene may date back hundreds of thousands of years.

The author says regarding the Negev desert: “The blaring sun may have contributed to my unavoidable feeling of connection at that moment while handling something someone had made an incredibly long time ago. Looking around, now with inquisitive eyes, as though at the scene of a crime, in all likelihood megafauna had been butchered here, perhaps in the aftermath of a dramatic hunt, yet the empty valley was silent and peaceful.”

What message is to be drawn from the word “peace” casually written on the page? The following sentence provides a clue.

“Therefore, if our current view of the Anthropocene focuses on how our activity has impacted the planet, the flip side of the coin would be to ask how we would want our surroundings to shape who we are.”

Exploring the “design science of peace” in human history.

What is peace? The author, who suffers from unidentified anxiety caused by mental illness, begins his examination of peace with “My Peace” and focuses on the term, tranquility. The term implies “calmness,” “serenity,” or “silence”—that is, something more than “peace.” It is not a passive definition of “peace,” as in, the absence of the state of war; it implies actively creating a state of equilibrium. It does not signify a state of peace because “there is no chaos”; it represents a state of peace that is “emergent.”

Many things have been devised for mental equilibrium—for example, tranquilizer drugs, acupuncture, moxibustion, yoga, zazen, mindfulness, etc. Alternatively, one could listen to specifically designed music or access a specifically designed environment to experience or restore equanimity.

The author proposes contrast between well- and mal-designed from animation—the subject of his affordance research. The author describes the contrast between “「相応」appropriate and 「整う」tidy”/“「相応でない」「整っていない」” and warns us regarding our insensitivity to mal-designed objects, the state of university students who can write difficult papers but cannot design, and the “absence of design education” that may be at the root of this.

“Good design is the foundation of life, with the direct potential to create good environments, societies, and communities. If people can realize this and make use of it, they will be able to steer a better direction─.”

Proposals for a peace that is not “without war and chaos,” but one that is “created and emergent”—a peace of dynamic equilibrium.

“Let’s talk about design for peace─.”

The author says: “Design was originally supposed to make the world freer, more abundant, and more interesting. A design that is not peace-oriented is tantamount to a contradiction in terms. In fact, there is not the slightest bit of malice in the design of the natural world. Only humans can design malice with equanimity. Even if a malicious design flourishes momentarily, it is doomed to be eliminated sooner or later…. The ‘architecture without architects’ and ‘design without designers’ that remain as they were meant to remain and blend in with nature are so beautiful that I can’t help but sigh. The materials and shapes of these products are the fruit of human activities to live frugally in harmony with nature, without waste and without placing a burden on the environment. Humans must have originally possessed this kind of aesthetic sense. It can be rephrased as humanity.”

With Buckminster Fuller as a guiding thread, the author introduces several discoveries, inventions, and practices of “design science” full of delightful knowledge and humanism, including the discovery of the double helix of the DNA by Watson Crick and the “democratic stairs” invented by the author himself. He will expand the discussion to the design of peace, metaphysical design, and distribution, and propose future “design science education.”

“Gray has much broader, more ambiguous, and more complex connotations, undefined, with different shades and tints. Reality is always complex. Not everything is black and white. Reality is gray─.”

Old and new, good and bad, black and white, past experience, knowledge and new findings, evolution and positive devolution, familiar and unfamiliar things—the author notes that our perception is always with and in these contrasts.

The author writes, “In particular, designers must move around in the world, deeply examining objects, environments, and relationships from different perspectives, which requires physical and mental movement. To do so, designers must observe objects and their evolution or devolution; they must also understand people, the environment, and the relationship between them.”

“Peace is the evolution of war. It can only happen once all sides have interacted and come to understand the complexity and diversity of humankind and human thought. War is all black, while peace is gray. Gray is a more natural and right answer for life and peace…. Peace is a product of design, just like anything else. It is a continual process that is alive and reactive. Designers and scientists have the power to improve this product to make it more durable and of higher quality. Changing the way we or the policy makers see, think, feel, and ultimately act, can make a significant difference in the design of peace in life.”

The core of Design x Science for Peace, by designers and only designers can testify.