Wonders Revealed: Design and Faux Science

"Science," wrote Heidegger, "is one of the most essential phenomena of the modern age." It's hygienic and objective, rational and finite, grounded in numerical certainty and cosmological reason. Science is all about clarity and specificity and rationalism, about charting DNA strands and analyzing chemical compounds, about physical density and gravitational pull and a reality that is anything but virtual. And in a world in which design has not only gone virtual but, in the process, become overtaken by catastrophically invasive degrees of public interaction, "science" itself has become unusually tantalizing. Gone are the days of thick eyeglasses and plastic pocket protectors, of nerds and slide rules and chemistry sets. In today's anything-goes world of relentless self-expression, science has become the designers' safe haven. It's the new "look and feel." And it's an easy one to imitate. We grasp its formal conceits—its systematic language of documentation, its methodical alignments—and parlay them into a visual language that resonates with kick-ass authority. It's a safe, if counterfeit posture for design, redolent of an aesthetic mindset that seems permanently lodged in the visual gestalt of circa-1965 Ciba Geigy pharmaceutical ephemera. Clean and lean. Formulaic. New and improved. It's the DamienHirstization of everyday life.

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