ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the frameworks of enaction and ontological design, particularly the work of Tony Fry, are synthesized to account for how humans act toward change across scales. Design is understood as a spatiotemporally extended form of adaptivity. When we design, we regulate ourselves in the local-present to resource our future selves in ways that make certain regulations either possible or easier, and thus, desired outcomes more probable. Adaptivity, here, entails an ongoing redirection of the individuating tendencies of person-world systems either for maintaining some existing trajectories or for stabilizing new ones. This happens predominantly through modifying constraints at the mesoscale of social organizing. This chapter considers different forms of design operative across scales, from organisms to organizations. It concludes with suggestions for how this perspective might be valuable in facing current ecological and environmental challenges.
