What do ‘Innovation, philosophy, and Christianity‘ have in common? They are the lens through which I try to make sense of the world. ‘Making sense of the world’, is what I usually tell people when they ask me what I do.
Why do I write about this here? Because this frames the way in which I approach questions about the future of Christianity in Europe.
Terms such as innovation, design, and philosophy make sense to me because of my personality and history. In projects and jobs that I really enjoyed, there was always an element of exploration, strategy, reflection, and creativity. The common denominator is something like ‘sensemaking.’ Throughout my life, I keep coming back to this desire, need, and calling to understand the world and to find my place in it.
Philosophy
I came to philosophy through hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the art and science of the interpretation of signs. More specifically, it deals with how to read a text and how to do that well. This is a crucial skill in a multicultural and multilingual world. But as a philosopher, I also want to think about the process behind the practice, understand how it works, and how we can think better about it. This is why I got involved in Translation Studies as a kind of ‘applied hermeneutical practise’.
Sensemaking
Hermeneutics is a good example of philosophy as sensemaking. One of the key insights of twentieth-century hermeneutics is that sense is both made and found. Whether we read a text or engage with the world around us, we are always moving between something which is given to us and the emerging interpretation of it in us. We look at the parts to make sense of the whole. At the same time, we come with a sense of the whole (a pre-judgement), through which we interpret the parts. This combined sense-making and sense-discovery takes place in a cycle of back-and-forth between parts and wholes, between initial sense and unfolding insight. It is the basic structure of how we engage with the world around us. This happens all the time, not just when we read a text, but also when we ‘read the room’ during a meeting or when we navigate rush hour traffic.
Design Thinking as sensemaking
My first serious engagement with Design Thinking was a couple of years ago, when I participated in an incubator led by the innovation team of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. In the process, I developed a prototype of a School for Cultural Literacy. In the workshop, participants engage in a meaningful conversation with ‘Big Questions’ through reading and reflection on some significant texts (from Plato to Wendell Berry). Design Thinking helped me to reframe a philosophical practice into an engaging group activity. I also discovered that I love tinkering with things, artefacts, and prototypes as a way of making sense of thoughts in material form.
Design as practical/speculative philosophy
Design Thinking emerged in the worlds of engineering and business. This seems far removed from the philosophical questions about meaning. Yet, I see Design practitioners explicitly engage with ethical dilemmas, like John V Willshire, who would rather ‘Make Things People Want’ than ‘Make People Want Things’. This places Design Thinking in an ethical perspective, reframing it as regenerative engagement with the world. A lot of work on (Speculative) Futures and foresight seems to move in a similar terrain. What intrigues me is how the speculative aspects of Design Thinking touch the practical philosophy of sensemaking.
Making sense of the world is challenging. One of the persistent struggles of modern and post-modern philosophy is overcoming dualisms, such as ‘form vs content’. For me, both the philosophical practice of hermeneutics and design thinking/speculative futures research are modes of engaging in that project.
Sensemaking and theology
Sensemaking also has to do with metaphysics, which deals with the most basic questions about the nature of reality. Some of these questions also touch on matters of faith and religious experience. This makes sense because for most of the history of Western philosophy, two streams have contributed to this field: classical Greek thought and Christian theology.
Is this still relevant? I think so. For generations, we have been told that we live in a material world. This approach has brought us ‘progress and prosperity,’ but at a great cost. Some people notice the cracks in the ‘immanent frame,’ while others are considering alternative metaphysics. Regardless of our personal position on this, it seems clear that the way we frame the world has a major impact on how we make sense of the world and our place in it. This is one of the points where philosophy bleeds into theology (or vice versa), and that makes sense to me.
As a theologian, I am interested in connections with other disciplines, both with academic philosophy (hermeneutics) and with Design Thinking as practical philosophy. Design Thinking is a practical tool, for example, for thinking about the impact and valorisation of our research. It can help with practical questions like how we form connections or how we relate to the soil on which we live.
For me, this is also an existential point of connection. The creation story in Genesis shows a Creator-Spirit who designs/creates something fragile, yet of incredible beauty. What if reflecting that Image has something to do with becoming fully alive? That makes a lot of sense.
(1st draft of a longer essay, feedback is welcome!)