Now approaching the beginning of a New Year, I am going to make some scientific resolutions. One, I shall not use theories to explain phenomena. Two, I shall not write papers.

Theories are points of view. They are condensed forms of reality; therefore, they are strictly speaking not reality of our direct experience. Physicists recognize theories’ limitations and further evaluate the theories’ “predictive power.” The opposite of theory—the reality, contains more complex relationships. A user uses theory to come closer to that reality, but beyond that, still needs to handle the contingencies beyond its predictive power. Constructing theory to achieve high predictive power, a matter of science, requires the crafter to first understand the reality first hand.


Users use theories to approach the reality; scientists, on the other hand, work from the reality to construct the theory. Folk saying is a form of theory. “Once bitten twice shy,” for example, predicts that a person hurt once by something will avoid it in the future. That happens to most of us. These theories are constructed out of observation of our environment. Scientists’ role, is therefore, to observe that reality; scientists examine what patterns can be extracted to inform others about the reality. Scientists observe by the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body, and instruments. All scientists use every one of these organs, even if they did not appear so in the writings.

The goal is to experience reality in as much as possible. It is less of a science, however, to develop theory from theories. For example I say, “Profit is important to companies because we are living in a capitalistic society.” I had substantiated the importance of profit by “capitalism”—a theoretical term. Such is an argument of circular form that leads to a scientific religion, not understanding.

I have joked to some colleagues that I have felt that scientists’ continuation to create more theories have served to add confusion to this world, and even more towards the PhD students. Theories such as Gestalt, I.Q, Capitalism, and numerous other –isms, explain everything, and yet—nothing. For instance, Capitalism can be described as “the production of goods and services [that] it systematically motivated by the accumulation of private profits” (Arvidsson and Peitersen 2009). This sounds right, but in reality, even social systems of production lead to accumulation of private goods (goods and profits here are taken as synonymous). Private needs are just human nature. Every means of social cooperation should have some ends in fulfilling them. Capitalism, in that sense, is explaining itself, but not the reality. The reality was better described by Dewey (1908) (note the year), who said that Capitalism had allowed the accumulation of large capitals and the founding of institutions of enormous size. The size inevitably lead to long hierarchy and chain of command. The commanders in chief are the shareholders. If I am selling you someone else’s product, I cannot give you favors nor be flexible; I will follow the owner’s instruction, i.e. policies. Because of the corporate’s hierarchy, the shop attendants and lowest in the chain, will follow policies like drones. This explains the real mechanics of capitalism. THIS—is theory construction.


I shall not write papers; rather, I am going to let the papers write themselves. Our understanding of the phenomena, our audience, along with our own faculties, should craft the paper. All too easy it is for scientists, particularly those early in their career, to follow theoretical trends. There had been a few when I started as a Master student: affective human factors, mass-customization, smart homes, universal design, and axiomatic design. Most of these were crafted prior to understanding the reality. Most of these had not come to fulfill their promise. Nonetheless, new theories have taken their limelight.

The reason why theoretical trends have existed, I believed, is due partly to academia’s need for grant writing. To write successful grants, you need to excite funders. To excite funders, you need exaggerating ideas. You need to construct a “theory” of imaginary scenarios: futuristic homes, workplace, and society. These gimmicks, built alongside the social life of scientists, are unavoidable. However, they should be decoupled from the real science, at least at the personal level.

The reality is more consistent and stable than trends. When the curtain of reality dropped on the dreams of smart homes of emotional toys and intelligent “ambient” (whatever an ambient means), what remains are homes stuffed with more social meaning, delivered by an ever more socially-connected Internet and communication technologies. The reality is stable because it is changing incrementally, and never by far-fetching theories. The tendency for scientists to claim as an “inventor,” by sole reason of being the “first to publish,” I feel is deplorable. Invention is a social process, slow and incremental. Scientists are certainly part of that network of builders, but not the only one.

The urge to write quickly, be it to follow a theoretical trend, for funding, or for the chase to be first, may lead to force writing before one has time to understand the reality. Force writing adds too many individual substances. One popular way to start is to quote something, say “Chrome OS is good [1][2][4][6][8][9].” The [1][2][4][6][8][9] are citations, meaning 6 other people had made that claim before. The validity of this approach is as close as saying “Chrome OS is good because 6 other people had said so.” This only shows a trend, not reality.

The reality is only as real as our heart can feel. That would mean a scientist often needs to be honest. How we convey that reality would depend on our audience. Base on the different audiences’ agendas, we can write the same idea in hundred of ways. That would mean a scientist often needs to be broad-minded.

Scientific writings will have to compose both the reality and the audience to reflect that complexity. Scientific papers are really social products—records of happenings as observed by the scientist for a certain audience. If a scientist stays true to his observations, the data that emerges from the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body, and instruments, his papers should just “write themselves.” The scientist (apart from grant application) should largely be invisible in the writings. He is now a conduit, a conductor of knowledge. Of course, the scientist needs to spend time and move his hands. However, the idea of the papers should come naturally. There is a zen saying of “be one with everything.” This saying implies a person is not at odd with the reality, and is feeling so.