Rubber ducks, nightmares, and unsaturated predicates: proto-scientific schemata are good for agile
Authors: 
Jenny Quillien, Dave WestAuthors Info & Claims
Abstract
Fine-grain case studies of scientific inquiry, lessons from linguistics on metaphoric thinking, the epistemology of Charles Sanders Peirce, recent work on architectural image-schemata, along with the computer world's own theorist, Peter Naur, all suggest that software developers (frequently dulled and desiccated from overdosing on 'Cartesian' methodologies) could benefit from imbibing a little 'mysticism' not the wave-your-hands woo-woo kind but the more ineffable hunch and gut side of human cognition. Scholarly publications in their final polished forms rarely admit that stories, jokes, eroticism, and dreams were the fertile seeds that germinated into 'serious' results. This essay looks to these 'closet' sources, non-reductionist, non-self conscious, metaphorical, aformal modes of thought as the salvation of a profession gone awry. It is notably proto-scientific image-schemata that retain our attention as a pragmatic tool for improving the fecundity of Agile methodology, at its roots, so to speak. The necessary context is provided by Peter Naur's fundamental insights about software development as 'theory building' coupled with an elaboration of the Agile concept of storytelling.
References
[1]
}}Alexander, Christopher. Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Cambridge: Harvard Paperback, 1964. Alexander's published Ph.D. exposes his struggle between his training in math and logic and mystical intuitive sources of knowledge.
[2]
}}Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building, New York: OUP, 1979. The Big Picture on 'the why' of architecture which is to achieve QWAN. The Quality Without a Name is redefined in his latest work as God.
[3]
}}Alexander, Christopher, Sarah Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, with M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel. A Pattern Language, New York: OUP, 1977. The how-to book which supplements The Timeless Way on 'the why' of architecture.
[4]
}}Alexander, Christopher. The Nature of Order, Berkeley, California: CES, 2003-2005. Four volume magnum opus attempting quite literally to decipher the nature of order in the universe and how to harness its secrets.
[5]
}}Bronowksi, Jacob. The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1978. Bronowski makes the pitch that art and science are but two compatible and mutually reinforcing sides of man's inquisitive mind.
[6]
}}Brooks, Frederick P. "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering," Computer, Vol.20, No.4 (April 1987). As explained in the essay, he looks at the conceptual construct behind programming.
[7]
}}de Geus, Arie. The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Business Press, 2002.
[8]
}}Gabriel, Richard. Patterns of Software, Oxford University Press, 1996. The use of patterns thinking in software.
[9]
}}Gass, William. Habitations of the World, Cornell University Press, 1985. Essays on writing and source of quotes by Gass and Robert Louis Stevenson.
[10]
}}Geertz, Clifford. Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1973. A collection of essays, the first of which looks at 'thick descriptions' as a major methodology in ethnography.
[11]
}}Hawkins, Paul. Growing A Business, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. A book for entrepreneurs speaking about how a business 'unfolds,' but getting the sequence of business decisions right requires in-depth understanding and 'feel' for the industry.
[12]
}}Hillier Bill and Hanson J. The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Basic text on space syntax. Provides concepts such as pathways, access, and intelligibility absent in Alexander's work.
[13]
}}Holton, Gerald. The Scientific Imagination. Cambridge, Harvard Press, 1998. Case studies of inquiry which reveal the subliminal schemata at work.
[14]
}}Johnson, M.L. The Body in the Mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Classic text on the role of bodily metaphors in thought.
[15]
}}Medina, Régis www.regismedina.com Régis Medina of Crossbow Labs in France keeps an interesting blog on the using concepts from The Nature of Order in implementation design.
[16]
}}Naur, Peter. "Programming as Theory Building," Microprocessing and Microprogramming, 15, (1985).
[17]
}}Peirce, Charles S. Values in a Universe of Chance, Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce, editor Philip Wiener, Doubleday, 1958.
[18]
}}Quillien, Jenny. Delight's Muse: on Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order, Ames, Iowa: Culicidae Press, 2008. A beginner's set of cliff notes on the main themes of the four volumes.
[19]
}}Quillien, Jenny. Haunted Spaces for Lesser Gods: A more modest interpretation of Christopher Alexander's Findings in Book Four of The Nature of Order, paper prepared for EDRA (Environmental Design and Research Association), Washington D.C., June 2010. Available from the author upon request. Paper proposes a secular explanation rather than Alexander's theistic one.
[20]
}}Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. An account of how the State has required legibility in order to govern and imposed 'thin' techne over 'thick' metis knowledge.
[21]
}}Shank, Robert. Tell Me A Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory, Chicago: Athenaeum Press, 1991. A look at how and why stories serve human cognition so well.
[22]
}}Week, David. A hermeneutic approach to the practice of architecture in a foreign country, Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, Australia, 2000.
Index Terms
- Rubber ducks, nightmares, and unsaturated predicates: proto-scientific schemata are good for agile
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October 2010984 pagesISBN:9781450302036DOI:10.1145/1869459- General Chairs:
- William R. Cook,
- Siobhán Clarke,
- Program Chairs:
- Martin Rinard,
- Kevin J. Sullivan,
- Daniel H. Steinberg
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Publication History
Published: 17 October 2010
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 45, Issue 10
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