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As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

Jacques Derrida#2

DesignKnowledgeMethodologyScience

About this quote

What does it mean?
Accepting that all discourse involves improvisation undermines the idea of a pure designer or scientist.
In plain terms
Everyone improvises, even experts.
What can you take from it?
Recognize that all work involves improvisation and existing materials.

Where it applies

  • academic theory
  • scientific method
  • philosophy

Putting it to work

  • questioning expertise
  • analyzing methodology

Questions to consider

  • What does it mean to be a true expert?

Another view

Some fields require strict adherence to design principles.

More from Jacques Derrida

  1. Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

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  2. At the end of Being and Nothingness...[,] Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself …

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a te…

    Permalink to quote #4

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