Knowledge As Design [Paperback]

David N. Perkins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Having tried, with mixed success, to teach students to do systems thinking, I find this book filling a real need -- and not just for those trying to teach systems.
—International Journal of General Systems

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1st edition (August 3, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089859863X
• ISBN-13: 978-0898598636
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Older Version of Updated Book Now Being Offered on Amazon, August 9, 2010

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Knowledge As Design (Paperback)

I was on the verge of buying this book when I realized that the author has a number of new books out, including Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education, which I have bought and will review in detail shortly, as well as the following four books that I am not buying, but certainly think are on a very important path toward educational revitalization and re-invention:

Smart Schools
The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking
The The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art (Occasional Paper Series)
Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence

This author's life's work should be evaluated in the desperate situation we are in now, where stovepipe thinking and budgeting along with numerous data pathologies and information asymmetries has led to the externalization of up to 80% of the costs of anything (Exxon and other oil companies, for example, externalize $12 a gallon in costs to the environment and public--their "profits" are fraudulent). Lacking an appreciation for Whole Systems thinking such as is represented by Buckminster Fuller (e.g. Critical Path) and Russell Lincoln Ackoff (e.g. Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track and On Purposeful Systems: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Individual and Social Behavior as a System of Purposeful Events, we are educating people who cannot break away from doing the wrong things and who allow our elites to continue to loot our commonwealth for selfish short-term purposes.

I have reviewed 80+ books pertaining to education, unfortunately Amazon does not make it possible to access just my reviews just on education (I read in 98 categories) so if you wish to browse my collected reviews on education (general, university, intelligence wealth of networks, intelligence public, etcetera), the only place to do that is Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (all reviews lead back to both the Amazon Page for the book and to my review should you wish to vote or comment).

See especially at Phi Beta Iota <Graphic Four Quadrants> of knowledge (Knowledge Management; Social Networking; Commercial Intelligence/External Research; and Organizational/Collective Intelligence); two books I have published (as will all books we publish, free online also) are:

Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty

Will Durant got it right: the only real revolution is in the mind of man.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL READING FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN SUPERIOR THINKING SKILLS AND FRAMEWORKS FOR REINVENTING MIND, February 12, 2009

By 

Anthony G, Ph.D. "Tony" (Lancaster, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knowledge As Design (Paperback)

Long ago, in 1985, I found a brilliant yet relative unknown scholar, a superior observer, analyst, and synthesist in the emerging fields of cognitive science, David N. Perkins. One of the first formats I learned from Dr. Perkins for high-level cognition and meta-cognition was KNOWLEDGE AS DESIGN. I have actively used and evolved or re-created in my own ways the original KNOWLEDGE AS DESIGN format I learned directly from David N. Perkins. I can suggest no better place to start that KNOWLEDGE AS DESIGN! Along with this work, I suggest you enjoy the wry and insightful humor of David Perkin's own mind as reflected in THE MIND'S BEST WORK along with THE EUREKA EFFECT. I work in the field on intelligence (geostrategic), military psychology, cognitive psychology, and natural medicine. On countless situations, I found and continue to find when my cognitive back, so to speak, is against the wall - I find myself calling upon the cognitive format(s) inherent in KNOWLEDGE AS DESIGN and other formats for creative and critical thinking created by the fertile mind of David Perkins, educated, as well, in Artificial Intelligence at MIT. In one instance, in a combat situation, the use of David's formats for superior thinking literally saved my life. I would be delighted to correspond with other readers whose interest are in the development of new ways of thinking, the development of new ways of inventing mind, as it were, at will. I can be reached at: [e-mail] A. Giannini, D.Nat.Med, Ed.M., M.A.