Theory v. Practice

See our glossary of other key terms

Theory and Practice as binary opposites

• People sometimes polarise 'theory' and 'practice', or exaggerate their differences.
• Sometimes these clichés are derogatory:
  • e.g. that manual workers are less intelligent than managers
  • e.g. that theorists are practically inept or dissociated from 'reality'
• The physicist David Bohm refuted the distinction between thought and 'action' as an artificial construct.
• Brain research confirms that both categories can be shown as events in the mind-body.

Theorist paradigm

intellectually astute, academically 'clever', detached, armchair dreamer

Practitioner paradigm

hands-on, useful, ready-to-be helpful realist

• Perhaps it reflects older (social or historical) binary distinctions:
  • e.g. owners and slaves
  • e.g. masters and servants
  • e.g. managers and workers
• This might explain the association between 'practice' (e.g. physical, or manual labour) and 'theory' (e.g. sedentary processes of reflection or thought).
• There is a further confusion, echoed in a similar conflict between 'reading/writing' and 'doing/making'.
• This reflects the lack of descriptors for doing, or making things in a thoughtful way.
• Polarising differences is unhelpful so we need to move beyond these simplistic concepts.
• Here is a quadrant that adds the (second) dimension of writing versus making:

Being alive = brain + body

A quadrant linking theory to practice

• A slightly more balanced interpretation of these observations is that the differences can be complementary:
• Human actions are always facilitated by some level of rapport between mind and body
• Designers owe more to the Crafts Guilds idea of 'knowing' as an outcome-oriented process, rather than with the monastic, truth-based idea of knowing, from which modern 'research' methodology evolved.
  • c.f. the notion of situated cognition.
  • c.f. Donald Schön's term reflection-in-action that differs from theory.
• Rather than polarising 'practice' and 'theory' we might differentiate between the quest for 'knowledge-as-primary-outcome' and the quest for 'utilities-as-primary-outcome'.
• Seen from a systemic perspective, 'practice' might be characterised less by 'hands-on' activities and more by the sum of relations and agreed meanings that spread through the whole team.