Was the “Absence of a Science of Design” Asserted Three Times? Rereading the Observations of 1978, 2008, and 2023 in Their Sources

An integrative summary rereading the problem statement repeatedly invoked in design research in Japan, the “absence of a science of design,” against the three statements it rests on. Full bibliographic details for each source appear in the “References” section below (with DOIs/URLs). The internal ledger with provenance tracking is at source/review/design-discipline-absence/papers.md (repository-internal, not published). For the institutional genealogy that forms the background, see japan-design-research-genealogy-literature; for the international state of the art, see design-research-2024-2026-literature. Protocol: .claude/rules/collection-protocol.md (zero fabrication, provenance tracking).

Survey Metadata

• Collection date: 2026-08-31 / Count: 25 (the breakdown is the reference list at the end; the internal ledger holds 11 rows in series A and 13 in series H, to which the references add 3 classic works that have no ledger row)
• Method: The PDF of Yaegashi and colleagues (2023) was read directly, and from it the quoted passages from Abe and Mukai and their bibliographic details were established. For Mukai, a peer-reviewed paper of 1985 by the same author was read as a source. The literature from 2023 to 2026 was collected by a subagent, and the principal DOIs were re-verified by the parent through the Crossref API and direct requests
• Confidence notes: The source texts of Abe (1978) and Mukai (2008) are books, and neither could be obtained for this study. The quoted passages are taken at second hand by way of Yaegashi and colleagues (2023). That the quotations exist at all was, however, confirmed by reading the PDF of that paper

TL;DR

The “absence of a science of design” is often introduced as one and the same lament repeated across half a century. Going back to the sources, the three statements are not saying the same thing.

What Kimimasa Abe (1978) asked about was the standing of design as a discipline: whether it is no more than “applied art.” What Shutaro Mukai set out was a judgment that only the Ulm School of Design had possessed a practical theory of the act of designing, together with an admission that he had not been able to grasp it anew himself: the incompleteness of the construction of a theory. What Kazaru Yaegashi and colleagues (2023) diagnosed was a dead end of method: that the pursuit of scientization arrived at the paradox that “design’s own knowledge lies in the impossibility of scientization.”

The question moves from standing to construction, and from construction to method.

Then in 2025, Nigel Cross himself, whom Yaegashi and colleagues cite as their theoretical footing, wrote an answer in two essays. “design is now recognized as an academic discipline” (Cross 2025). “we have emerged, and it is time to adopt a maturing mindset” (Cash, Daalhuizen & Cross 2025).

Among the peer-reviewed literature from 2023 to 2026, nothing was found that continues to argue the absence head-on. Instead the discussion has split in two: the problem of maturity, which presupposes that the discipline has been established, and the abandonment of boundaries, which holds that there is no need to be a unified discipline. The hard problems that remain lie elsewhere: that there is little evidence demonstrating the impact of design research (Rodgers 2024), and that what a doctorate in design guarantees has not been settled (Feast 2023, Valentine & Farias 2024).

Reading the Three Statements in Their Sources

flowchart TB
  A["Kimimasa Abe 1978<br/>Dezain Shiko"]
  M["Shutaro Mukai 1985 / 2008<br/>Assessment of HfG Ulm"]
  Y["Yaegashi et al. 2023<br/>Research on Design Science"]
  C["Cross 2025 / Cash et al. 2025<br/>Visible Language / Designing"]
  K["Chow 2023<br/>connected discipline"]

  A -- "Question: can it hold as a discipline" --> Q1["Is design no more<br/>than applied art"]
  M -- "Question: how is a theory built" --> Q2["Ulm alone has a lineage<br/>of practical theory"]
  Y -- "Question: how is research assembled" --> Q3["Pursuing scientization led to<br/>the impossibility of scientization"]
  C -- "Answer: it has already emerged" --> Q4["Toward a maturing mindset"]
  K -- "Answer: no unified discipline is needed" --> Q5["Toward a connected discipline"]

  Q1 -.-> Q2 -.-> Q3
  Q3 -.-> Q4
  Q3 -.-> Q5

Kimimasa Abe 1978: Is Design No More Than “Applied Art”?

Kimimasa Abe writes as follows in his 1978 book Dezain Shiko (Design Thinking, 1978), published by Bijutsu Shuppan-sha [this title is unrelated to the design thinking movement of today].

Can a “science” of design not be established at all? Or is design, in the end, at most “applied art,” so that thinking about a “science” of it is beside the point from the start? (阿部 1978, pp.209-210)

(Original: いったい，デザインの「学」というものは成り立ちえないものなのだろうか。それとも，デザインという分野は，つまるところせいぜい「応用美術」なのであってそれの「学」などを考えることはもともと検討ちがいというものなのだろうか)

He goes on to write:

It cannot be denied that theoretical results concerning design in general tend not yet to have consolidated sufficiently, compared with scholarly research in art history, aesthetics, or the various fields concerning architecture (阿部 1978, p.210)

(Original: 一般にデザインに関する理論的成果も，美術史とか美学，あるいは建築に関する諸分野の学的研究に比べてまだ十分に固まっていないきらいのあることは否定できない)

What is in question is the standing of design in comparison with adjacent fields. Art history, aesthetics, and architecture have scholarly research; design does not. Design had come to be taught at universities, yet it was grasped only as “an effective skill directed at reality” (「現実へむけての有効なわざ」).

Kimimasa Abe is himself the person who, together with Shutaro Mukai, opened the Department of Science of Design at Musashino Art University in 1967 (see japan-design-research-genealogy-literature). Ten years after founding the department, he is asking whether the “science” on which that department was supposed to stand can be established at all.

Shutaro Mukai: Only Ulm Possessed a Practical Theory

What is cited as Shutaro Mukai’s statement of 2008 is a passage from Sei to Dezain: Katachi no Shigaku I (Life and Design: A Poetics of Form I; Chuko Bunko). He is said to have named, as the cornerstone of the founding of the Department of Science of Design, “an awareness of the problem posed by the situation of an absence of design theory” (「デザイン理論の不在という状況に対する問題意識」) (向井 2008, p.231).

A caution is needed here. This is not a fresh observation of absence made in 2008; it is a retrospective account of the motive behind founding the department in 1967. The year of the statement and the moment the statement refers to are different.

What Mukai himself wrote at the time can be read in a peer-reviewed journal. In “The idea of environmental formation and its future tasks: on the Ulm School of Design,” published in 1985 in 『デザイン学研究』[Bulletin of JSSD], Mukai places the “environmental formation” raised by the Ulm School of Design (1953–1968) as follows.

They are, in all likelihood, the only lineage of practical theory in the latter half of the twentieth century to have unfolded the act of designing toward utopia as a hopeful possible reality

(Original: それらは20世紀後半において、デザイン行為を希望的な可能的現実としてのユートピアへ向けて展開されたおそらく唯一の実践的理論の系譜であろうと思われる)

The qualification “in all likelihood the only” does the work here. On Mukai’s assessment, the only place where a lineage of practical theory for the act of designing existed is Ulm.

On that basis, Mukai continues:

Yet it is still difficult for me to grasp them adequately here; rather, treating this as something like a notebook of memoranda for future work, I would like to confine myself to listing the viewpoints that seem to require examination

(Original: けれども、私自身がそれらをここで充分掘え直すことはまだ困難であり、むしろ今後の作業の覚書ノートのようなつもりで、検討が必要と思われる視点を挙げていくにとどめたいと思う)

Eighteen years after the department was founded, its founder writes that the reconstruction of the theory is still at the stage of a “notebook of memoranda.” This is less an observation of absence than a confession that the construction is unfinished.

The same paper contains one further fact that bears on the later discussion. At Ulm the curriculum was reorganized in 1958 by Tomás Maldonado, and it went on “to strengthen its scientific character and its engineering content” (「科学性と工学的内容を強めていく」). The scientization of design was built in from the start on the side of the ideas that design research in Japan imported.

Yaegashi and Colleagues 2023: The Paradox of the Impossibility of Scientization

In their 2023 paper, Kazaru Yaegashi, Mika Isobe, and Haruhi Miyoshi group Abe and Mukai together as “the problem statement of the ‘absence of a science of design’ in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s” and trace half a century of developments from there.

The path they trace runs as follows. The design methodology movement, beginning with the London conference of 1962, sought to grasp objectively and scientifically a design that had been treated as a tacit process. Simon’s sciences of the artificial (1969) laid the ground for viewing design scientifically. Cross (2000) distinguished “Design Science” from “Science of Design,” and Krippendorff (2005) added a third, “Science for Design.”

Beyond that, however, a dead end came into view. Yaegashi and colleagues write:

We today, facing the “absence of a science of design” (an ontological problem) that has been raised since the 1960s, confront the paradoxical situation that, at the end of a pursuit of being scientific, design’s own knowledge lies in the impossibility of scientization

(Original: 現在の私たちは，1960年代から提起されてきた「デザイン学の不在」（存在論的課題）に対して，科学的であることを追究してきた先に，デザイン独自の知が科学化の不可能性にある，という逆説的な状況に対峙している)

The grounds cited are Gaver’s (2012) observation that treating a science of design on a par with science is difficult because the criteria of evaluation differ, and Buchanan’s (1992) discussion of wicked problems.

The conclusion of Yaegashi and colleagues is not a reaffirmation of absence. After examining the eleven Design Research Notes in the special issue of Design Studies 78 (2022), they organize the tasks into three. The need for discussion of methodology itself, the need to examine an ontology proper to design research, and the need to examine an epistemology proper to it. And they hold that these three should be asked not separately but as a problem of consistency.

The question has changed from “can it be established” to “how is it to be assembled.”

The Three Are Not Saying the Same Thing

Set side by side, the object of the question can be seen to move.

• Abe 1978: Can design be recognized as a discipline? Its theoretical results are meager compared with adjacent fields. A problem of standing
• Mukai 1985 / 2008: The lineage of practical theory exists only at Ulm, and its reconstruction is unfinished. A problem of construction
• Yaegashi et al. 2023: At the end of the pursuit of scientization, an impossibility came into view. Consistency among ontology, epistemology, and methodology is required. A problem of method

The summary that “the same absence was pointed out three times” erases this movement. Nor, in fact, did the next question arrive because the previous one had been settled. Abe’s question was settled in a different form in 2025, as will be seen below. There is little trace of Mukai’s task of construction having been taken up in the Japanese-language sphere. Yaegashi’s problem of method is now at the center of the international discussion.

In 2025, a Principal Wrote That It Has Already Been Established

Nigel Cross, whom Yaegashi and colleagues cite as their theoretical footing, was the founding editor of Design Studies (1979) and served as its editor-in-chief from 1984. In 2025 this same Cross wrote two essays.

One is the invited paper “Making Design Research Visible” in the journal Visible Language. Its abstract reads:

Design research now has an established history extending over more than 60 years. The current robust state of the field indicates that there has been real development and consolidation, including the establishment of academic journals. Most significantly, design is now recognized as an academic discipline.

The other is the lead article of Designing, the journal launched by the Design Research Society in 2025, co-authored with Philip Cash and Jaap Daalhuizen.

Design research is the outcome of more than 60 years of growth, yet many still seem to regard and approach it as an emerging discipline. We set out to answer whether we are still an ‘emerging’ discipline, and if an emerging mindset is still productive… We come to two conclusions. First, we contend that we have emerged, and it is time to adopt a maturing mindset.

To Abe’s question of 1978, whether “a ‘science’ of design can be established at all,” an answer has come 47 years later from a figure at the center of the field: it has already been established, and the next stage is maturity.

This is not, however, a rebuttal of the skepticism of Abe or Yaegashi. It is written from the premise that the skepticism dissolved with time. Cash and colleagues argue that continuing to hold an emerging mindset produces conceptual and empirical ambiguity and methodological bias, and they move the location of the problem from “can it be established” to “as an established field, what is to be made more rigorous.”

Another Answer: There Is No Need to Be a Unified Discipline

There is a way of answering other than declaring establishment.

At the EAD conference of 2023, Rosan Chow presented “Design Research: Making of a Connected Discipline” in two parts, arguing that building a “unified and bounded discipline” is both unrealistic and undesirable. What is offered instead is the concept of a “connected discipline.”

In their introduction to the second edition of The Routledge Companion to Design Research (2023), Paul Rodgers and Joyce Yee positively affirm the diversity of design research and set the coexistence of multiple approaches, rather than a single method or viewpoint, as the ideal image of the discipline.

The 2026 special issue of Design Issues, “Design Studies Beyond Design” (edited by Gruendel and Mareis), which defends the very scholarly discomfort at the extension of the concept of “design” beyond the profession, lies in the same direction (see design-research-2024-2026-literature).

What Abe worried about in 1978 was that design was too small and too weak to be recognized as a discipline. What is being discussed in 2026 is that the concept of design has spread so far that no boundary can be drawn. The direction of the question has reversed.

The Hard Problems Have Moved Elsewhere

That absence has ceased to be the point at issue does not mean the hard problems have disappeared.

At the DRS conference of 2024, Paul Rodgers reported the results of a study of 62 contemporary design research projects in the United Kingdom conducted from 2017 to 2021. The conclusion, reached after working with more than 2,000 researchers, is severe.

Whilst there is general acknowledgement that design research can contribute to the social, cultural, environmental and economic fabric of a nation, there is little evidence (to date) that articulates clearly the specific impact(s) of design research.

There is a general recognition that design research has value. Evidence showing concretely what that value has brought about is scarce. Under pressure over the allocation of research funding, this has become a more pressing problem than the standing of the discipline itself.

Doctoral education is stuck at the same place. Luke Feast (2023) takes as his problem the weakness of the theoretical basis for validating the assessment of the design doctorate, and the special issue of The Design Journal edited by Valentine and Farias (2024) raises “what is the purpose of the doctorate in design” as the unresolved central question. The title of the special issue is “What got us here, won’t get us there.”

Design has been recognized as an academic discipline. Having been recognized, when it comes to explaining what its degree guarantees and what it has brought about, no answer is ready.

The Blank in the Japanese-Language Sphere

No peer-reviewed paper taking up the 2023 paper of Yaegashi and colleagues head-on could be found in 『デザイン学研究』[Bulletin of JSSD] itself, nor in Vols. 3 to 5 of 『デザイン科学研究』[Research on Design Science], nor in issues 82–84 of 『デザイン理論』[Design Theory], nor in 『芸術工学会誌』[Journal of the Design Research Association].

This blank overlaps with the configuration seen in japan-design-research-genealogy-literature. Design research in Japan branched into schools, General Design Theory, the Science of Design, kansei engineering, and geijutsu kogaku, without citing one another. There is, in the first place, no common place prepared as an institution to take up the question of the “absence of a science of design.”

The question Abe and Mukai raised in the Department of Science of Design continued within the genealogy of that department. Akiyo Kobayashi is a co-author of a 1980 paper by Mukai, and that same Kobayashi served as president of the Japan Society for the Science of Design from 2020 to 2023. But within the scope of this study, no trace could be confirmed of the question itself becoming an agenda item for the society as a whole.

Gaps (Unaddressed Points)

• The source text of Kimimasa Abe’s Dezain Shiko (Design Thinking, 1978). Only the two passages quoted by Yaegashi and colleagues have been read. How Abe answered this question, or whether he ended without giving an answer, is unknown
• The source text of Shutaro Mukai’s Sei to Dezain: Katachi no Shigaku I (Life and Design: A Poetics of Form I, 2008). The same applies
• The Japanese-language discussion between 1978 and 2023. There must be literature treating this question in the 45 years between Abe and Yaegashi, but it has not been searched systematically. Takeo Yoshida’s Dezain Hohoron no Kokoromi (An Attempt at a Design Methodology, 1996) and Daijiro Mizuno (2017) appear in the references of Yaegashi and colleagues, so they offer a starting point
• Parallel statements of the same question. Minoru Matsui (2024) launched a Critical Design Studies book club within the Design Research Association, opening with the claim that “pseudo-scientific approaches are frequently found in design theory” (「デザイン論には疑似科学的アプローチが多く見受けられる」) — questioning the scholarly validity of design from the opposite direction to Yaegashi and colleagues. Neither cites the other. How to treat this parallelism and disconnection is set out in a submission plan for the Bulletin of JSSD
• Responses to Cross’s declaration of establishment. The declaration of 2025 is still recent, and no literature responding to it could be confirmed
• The distinction in usage between “デザイン学” (a science of design) and “デザイン研究” (design research). The Japanese term “デザイン学” corresponds fully neither to design as a discipline nor to design research in English. The possibility that this non-correspondence produces mismatches in the discussion has not been examined

Related Notes

• japan-design-research-genealogy-literature: the institutional genealogy of design research in Japan. The Department of Science of Design opened by Kimimasa Abe and Shutaro Mukai, the branching of schools, and the genealogy of the society presidency
• design-research-2024-2026-literature: the distribution of international design research in 2024–2026. The “present” of this note overlaps with that literature map
• design-epistemology-methodology-foundations: wicked problems, abduction, set-based exploration. The lineage of Buchanan (1992) and Rittel & Webber (1973) cited by Yaegashi and colleagues
• design-research-methods-validity: the discussion of methods and validity, including Research through Design
• design-professions-expertise: the position of design seen through theories of the professions. Standing as a discipline and standing as a profession are different problems

References

The Three Statements and Their Surroundings

1. 阿部公正 (1978)『デザイン思考』美術出版社. [Abe, K. Dezain Shiko (Design Thinking), Bijutsu Shuppan-sha] Bibliographic details established from the reference list of Yaegashi et al. (2023). Source text not obtained
2. 向井周太郎 (1985)「環境形成の思想と今後の課題：ウルム造形大学をめぐって」『デザイン学研究』No.53, pp.9-12. [Mukai, S. “The idea of environmental formation and its future tasks: on the Ulm School of Design,” Bulletin of JSSD] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jssdj/1985/53/1985_KJ00007024248/_pdf/-char/ja
3. 向井周太郎 (2008)『生とデザイン かたちの詩学 I』中公文庫. [Mukai, S. Sei to Dezain: Katachi no Shigaku I (Life and Design: A Poetics of Form I), Chuko Bunko] Bibliographic details established from the reference list of Yaegashi et al. (2023). Source text not obtained
4. 八重樫文・磯邉美香・三好春陽 (2023)「デザイン研究における今日的課題の検討」『デザイン科学研究』(立命館大学) Vol.2, pp.51-68. [Yaegashi, K., Isobe, M. & Miyoshi, H. “An examination of contemporary issues in design research,” Research on Design Science (Ritsumeikan University)] https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/rcds/file/2023/6_rcds_2_yaegashi_isobe_miyoshi.pdf
5. 吉田武夫 (1996)『デザイン方法論の試み』東海大学出版会. [Yoshida, T. Dezain Hohoron no Kokoromi (An Attempt at a Design Methodology), Tokai University Press]
6. 水野大二郎 (2017)「『意地悪な問題』から『複雑な社会・技術的問題』へ」『KEIO SFC JOURNAL』17(1), pp.6-28. [Mizuno, D. “From ‘wicked problems’ to ‘complex socio-technical problems’,” KEIO SFC JOURNAL]
7. 八重樫文・安藤拓生 (2019)『デザインマネジメント論』新曜社. [Yaegashi, K. & Ando, T. Dezain Manejimento Ron (On Design Management), Shin’yosha]
8. Simon, H. A. (1969) The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press
9. Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973) “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning,” Policy Sciences 4(2), 155-169
10. Buchanan, R. (1992) “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” Design Issues 8(2), 5-21
11. Cross, N. (1999) “Design research: A disciplined conversation,” Design Issues 15(2), 5-10
12. Cross, N. (2000) “Design as discipline,” in Durling, D. & Friedman, K. eds., Doctoral education in design: Foundations for the future
13. Krippendorff, K. (2005) The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design, CRC Press
14. Gaver, W. (2012) “What should we expect from Research through Design?” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

The Discussion of 2023–2026

15. Cash, P., Daalhuizen, J. & Cross, N. (2025) “Designing: A new era for design research,” Designing 1(1), 12-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/30497671251392170
16. Cross, N. (2025) “Making Design Research Visible,” Visible Language 59(1), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.34314/rgn7xe38
17. Chow, R. (2023) “Design Research: Making of a Connected Discipline Part 2,” 15th EAD Conference Proceedings, 208-214. https://doi.org/10.5151/ead2023-1BIL-03Posit-04Chow-2
18. Rodgers, P. A. (2024) “What does design research do?” DRS2024 Boston, article 105. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.461
19. Rodgers, P. A. & Yee, J. (2023) “Introduction to the second edition,” in The Routledge Companion to Design Research, 2nd ed. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003182443-1
20. Kaszynska, P. & Kimbell, L. (2024) “Design Practice Research: Conditions and Outcomes,” Design and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2024.2401240
21. Feast, L. (2023) “Bridging Reasoning and Results: An Assessment Validation Perspective on the PhD in Design,” She Ji 9(4), 518-540. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872624000030
22. Valentine, L. & Farias, P. L. (2024) “The Changing Landscape of Doctoral Education,” The Design Journal, 981-987. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2024.2431003
23. Boddington, A. & Bruyns, G. (2024) “The In, Through and About of the Design PhD,” Cubic Journal 7(7), 4-13. https://doi.org/10.31182/cubic.2024.7.64
24. McComb, C. & Jablokow, K. (2022) “A conceptual framework for multidisciplinary design research with example application to agent-based modeling,” Design Studies 78, 101074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101074
25. Chataigner, M. (2026) “On what ground to design change: An inquiry into emerging design epistemologies,” The Design Journal 29(2), 633-654. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2025.2603604

Unverified Items

• The source texts of Kimimasa Abe (1978) and Shutaro Mukai (2008). The quoted passages are taken at second hand by way of Yaegashi et al. (2023), and the surrounding context has not been checked [requires primary verification]
• The DOI of Part 1 of Chow (2023). Part 2 was confirmed to resolve, but Part 1 rests only on an inference from the pattern of Part 2 [requires primary verification]
• Del Giorgio Solfa’s (2025) comparison of the institutional trajectories of Europe and Latin America. Its bibliographic details rest on search results alone and the full text could not be reached, so it is not treated in the body of this note [requires primary verification]
• The text of the Design Issues special issue by Gruendel & Mareis (2026). It has not been checked beyond the range treated in design-research-2024-2026-literature
• The Japanese-language discussion from 1978 to 2023. It has not been searched systematically