Idea ex machina

The notion of idea as an element of thought, or a way of thinking, as the result of mental activity, or conception in the mind of something to be done, such as a plan, or intention for doing something, goes back to the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment (late 1600s to the end of the 1700s). This in contrast to the Romantic Era or Romanticism, a movement that started around 1770 (with its peak from 1800 to 1850) in response to the rational views of the age of enlightenment. The romantic thinkers felt that reason was overemphasised and that more focus should be put on the attributes such as aesthetic experience, human emotions and free expression. Now, Enlightenment is more closely related with natural sciences while romanticism is more associated with the arts and humanities. Ideation, then, in the context of design, from the First Machine Age, or the Industrial Revolution, to the Second Machine Age, or the Digital Revolution, interspersed by the Arts and Crafts movement and Modernism, draws inspiration both from the sciences (rational reasoning) and the arts (human subjectivity). In the wake of artificial intelligence, AI, this may suggest idea ex machina as an idea device, or generator or plotter of ideas. But while AI has established a direction and momentum of its own, the march of technology does not necessarily separate the ideologies of enlightenment and romanticism. True, Romanticism was a counter movement to the Enlightenment in its rejection of Enlightenment ideas about the primacy of reason and science. Science, however, is not an activity that goes on independently of all others. Thinking and feeling, then, are better seen as forming an indivisable continuum creating meaningful possibilities in contemporary design.