Reflecting and Acting: reflecting on acting and acting on reflecting.
Ranulph Glanville
I
In this volume, Adam Jakimowicz writes with great poetic intensity about the experience of being in reflection, of how it is, and where you are, when you do it.
In Reflections + 3, I also wrote about reflecting on reflecting (Glanville 2006). My text was more prosaic. It arose from the strange circumstance that Adam and I were asked to run the very first seminar in the Research Training Seminar series on the theme of reflection, yet, since it was the first workshop and the participants were just beginning their journeys, there was no material to reflect on.  All we could do, then, was to introduce the notion of reflection and use this introduction to reflection as the material on which to do what we were describing: we introduced reflection and we reflected on it. In this manner, reflection was treated as a reflexive, second order subject—both its self, and the subject of its investigations and explorations through reflection. Such circular, recursive systems that “apply themselves to themselves”, are the subject matter of cybernetics
This year we were invited to present our workshop on reflection much later in the sequence of seminars. The contradiction that made the workshop in 2006 seem absurd (but which also drove us to present reflection reflexively) was recognised by the participants and organisers, and we were invited to work with the new participants at a time when they were not absolutely new to the processes of research that are being explored and developed at Sint Lucas.
But, as is so often the case, there were unforeseen side effects. I will point to two of them.
The first was that the richness of the concept of reflection as both something to talk about and something to do, and its recursive nature in reflecting on reflection, would no longer be central: reflection becomes more of a tool applied to other material than a subject examined within its own terms.
The second was that 2007’s participants in the workshop, no longer being new to the processes of research, had a different, and impatient question. It is this question, the question of how to act, of finding a research theme, that we will come to consider in this short essay.

II
Reflective Practice is a term given by Donald Schön to describe how he learned to describe his understanding of the way that professionals proceed in their professional activity. Schön studied representatives from several professions (including architecture and psychotherapy) and concluded that they way in which they maintained and developed their professional competence was through the central act of reflection.
Here is Schön describing the key actions he has observed in professionals, especially architects, in his 1983 book, “The Reflective Practitioner”:
The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (Schön 1983.)
Reflection, which we might think of as a way of “being-in-thinking” is, in Schön’s use, a way of generating action—the experiment “to generate both a new understanding … and a change in the situation”. The intention he attributes to reflection is that the practitioner should catch his practice and expertise so as to value it and amplify it (improve on the practice). To reflect is not to dream gently, but to act through a form of deep, possibly meditative self-criticism. 
Here, by way of elucidation, is the second definition from the Oxford Dictionary of the American Language that comes with Apple’s Tiger O.S. 10.4:
2 serious thought or consideration : he doesn't get much time for reflection.
• an idea about something, esp. one that is written down or expressed : reflections on human destiny and art.
Perhaps this is a difficult concept? Perhaps the overtones of the term reflection, its use in context, have become tied up in dreamy interpretation—for the group of participants in the 2007 workshop were concerned that they didn’t have anything to work on as their research theme, that they needed to find such a theme or project: and it seemed that they did not envision our workshop on reflection as providing this. They did not imagine the connection between reflection and action.
Thus, our workshop acquired, at the last minute, a secondary theme. As well as reflection, we undertook to help with explicit moves towards action. And, even though I would argue that reflection is a type of action and that it should lead to action, it seemed that this view is far from obvious.

III
In a recent Hewlett Packard advertisement, Samuel Johnson, the great dictionarist, is quoted as follows:
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
For some time I have also argued that there are distinct types of (research) knowledge, two of which I distinguish and contrast as “knowledge of” (what is) and “knowledge for” (action).
Knowledge of (the world as it is) is the province of, for instance, science. Designers, in contrast, are interested in changing the world rather than in the world as found: they are interested in what might be and in how to bring that about. In contrast to the scientist, they are interested in what is not (yet). (Glanville 2007) Thus, the shape of knowledge (whether of or for) is a matter of purpose (it is cybernetic): knowledge is neither fixed nor untouched by intention.
Making such a distinction between kinds of knowledge (or, better, knowing) is scarcely original. Scholars have, for millennia, distinguished different types of knowledge that serve different intentions. Here, for instance, is the doyen of design theorists, Nigel Cross, writing with Naughton and Walker in 1981:
In his book “The Concept of Mind”, Ryle (1949) offered a useful distinction between two categories of knowledge: knowing how and knowing that. The philosophical tradition behind this distinction stretches back a long way. For our purposes it surfaces in English philosophy in Russell’s (1910) distinction between “knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description”.
Others, such as Michael Polyani (1967), have written about tacit knowledge, a type of knowledge that we hold, almost unknowingly, that allows us to perform tasks, and which may be making a come back today under the name of embodied knowledge. Polyani follows in a tradition that (of course) we can chase back to the Ancient Greeks and Aristotle. Aristotle talked of types of intelligence that help us understand and act in different ways, including the intelligence that is to be found in the hands of specially gifted practitioners (an early precursor of Polyani’s tacit knowledge).
Even Herbert Simon, whose work, I fear, may have done more damage to our understanding of design than anyone else’s in recent times, wrote (Simon 1969) of two categories of learning, that concerned with “what is” and that concerned with “what might be”, identifying the first with (the type of knowledge associated with) science, the second with (the type of knowledge associated with) design.
Of course, there are differences in these characterisations. Mine is merely the latest in the line, but I like it because it is simple and to the point, at least in English. Prepositions are magical!
The point is that we have known of different types of knowledge intended to fit different purposes for a long time, but seem recently to have almost forgotten this, so powerfully do we support (my) knowledge of. And, for designers, the type of knowledge we seek is not knowledge of what is, but knowledge for action.

IV
What are we trying to do in the RTS programme?
The point of the RTS programme is, in the end, to help designers (learn how to) improve their ability to act—as designers. Our part is to introduce the notion of reflection, and the thinking that goes with it: not as a briefing, but as a way of acting. Gerard de Zeeuw, another contributor to the RTS programme, has worked on action and its importance for more than the 30 years we have known each other, and I mainly owe to him my slowly developing understanding of action, and how special and yet how critical it is.
I maintain that, because it is “knowledge for” which is the knowledge designers seek and use, and because so much of (design) research is interested in producing “knowledge of”, much of the knowledge that derives from research turns out to be so singularly unusable by and unfriendly towards architects, who, when forced to use it, produce such poor outcomes. Knowledge for is not much studied, and has been left relatively underdeveloped. There is a need to develop it as a field of study in its own right.
But, by definition, this knowledge does not generally come from an approach derived from science—or, at least, science as it has come to be understood since the Enlightenment. It comes mainly from elsewhere, from different approaches, some of which may be very old.
I maintain reflection is one of these. The cybernetic act of reflection leads us to understand our work in manners that suggest ways forward (amongst other things). When done well, and in accord with Schön’s description, reflection is itself both an action, and it leads to action (it is second-order): and that action is both based on and a basis for designerly research. The knowledge reflection generates is not knowledge of, but knowledge for.
So that, while we did show some of the participants how they had created knowledge for (how there might be research actions in the outcomes of their reflections so far), that was part of the reflection (the act of reflection); it was a reflection on their reflections, and takes us back to the recursiveness of our first session in 2006.
Thus: what I have written above, and the activities it describes, are a kind of reflection, showing what I claimed earlier: “reflection is a type of action … that … should lead to action.”
And, for the participants, although we did indeed intervene to help them find themes, the practise of reflection, properly undertaken in accordance with Schon’s description, will lead to the discovery of paths of action, anyhow.
References
Cross, N, Naughton, J and Walker, D (1981) Design Method and Scientific Method, in Jacques, R and Powell, JA (eds) Design: Science: Method, Guildford, Westbury House
Frayling, C (1993), Research in Art and Design, Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol. A 1, No 1, pp 1-5
Glanville, R (2005) Certain Propositions concerning Prepositions, Cybernetics and Human Knowing vol 12 no 3
Glanville, R (2006) What Makes the Difference—Reflecting on Reflecting (on Reflecting on Reflecting) in Verbeke, J and Hanssons, N (eds) Reflections + 3, Brussels, Sint Lucas Architectuur
Glanville, R (2007) Design Prepositions, in Belderbos, M and Verbeke, J (eds) The Unthinkable Doctrate, Brussels, Hogeschool voor Wetenchap en Kunst Sint Lucas
Polyani, M (1967) The Tacit Dimension, Garden City NY, Anchor Books
Russell, B (1910) Mysticism and Logic, and other essays, London, George Allen and Unwin
Schön, D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner; How Professionals Think in Action, New York, Basic Books
Simon, H (1969) The Sciences of the Artificial, Cambridge, MIT Press
Ryle, G (1949) The Concept of Mind, London, Hutchinson