Novgorod researchers studied the etymology of the word “design” and revealed the ontological essence of this phenomenon. It lies in the connection between design and the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of existence.
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The purpose of design is to create emotional, image and mythological needs.
An interesting scientific publication has been published in the journal “Scientific Notes of the Novgorod State University”. Its authors are Anna Motorina, Ph.D., from the Regional Institute for Professional Development and Alexander Motorin, Ph.D., from the Novgorod State University named after Yaroslav the Wise.
They conducted an etymological study of the word “design”, tracing its history and evolution. The authors of the work point out that design has universal existential properties.
Thanks to this, today it includes a wide variety of works: a creative idea (project), the process of its implementation (design activities) and the result obtained (product).
Taking into account the historiographical review of design definitions and typologies in Russian and English literature, researchers accepted design, functionality and aesthetics as fundamental characteristics of this phenomenon.
These are properties that “in their trinity are capable of overcoming the discretion of the culture of postmodernism with the simulations and uncontrolled consumption that it generates,” explain the authors of the publication.
Based on the identified features, they were able to trace the connection between the design and the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of existence. They turned their attention to one of the English versions of the Bible from the time of the Reformation.
The first sentence of the Book of Genesis is: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But in this edition it was not translated by the later canonical verb “created” (to create, to create), but by using the synonym “designed.”
“By using such a variation, the translator shifted the emphasis from the very act of the creation of the world to its creation precisely according to the Creator’s plan; in other words, according to this text, the world was “designed” by God,” the scientists write.
In other words, the first designer was God himself, something that people did not immediately realize. At the end of the 20th century, this idea formed the basis of the theory of Intelligent Design. It attempted to prove the emergence of life on Earth thanks to a higher intelligence, and not as a result of random evolution. Moreover, it was based, first of all, on natural scientific facts attesting to the existence of God, and not on the texts of the Holy Scriptures.
However, in the modern world, design as a phenomenon has acquired new features, which has been greatly facilitated by the development of technology. According to researchers, the purpose of design is not so much the formation of new material needs in humans, but the creation of “emotional, image and mythological needs.” In other words, there is “an active and conscious invasion of design into the sphere of the spiritual state of society.”
“The term ‘design’ is equally in demand and unifying for philology, philosophy, theology, art history and cultural studies,” the authors of the paper conclude.
