droqen's forum-shaped notebook

~ The harmful industrial mechanistic viewpoint. (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=443)

P10
Look at the yellow tower on the facing page. It has the smile of the Buddha, of life and simplicity. It moves us in the heart. I want a conception of order subtle enough to explain the way the yellow tower makes us feel.
...
the order which can be treated as negative entropy is too simple, and, for complex artistic cases, almost trivial. [emphasis mine]
...
It can account for low-level order ... but not for any complex order which is interesting ...

P3,4
someone asked me, How did you come up with the pattern language?
...
We assumed from the beginning that everything was based on the real nature of human feeling and -- this is the unusual part -- that human feeling is mostly the same from person to person, mostly the same in every person. Of course there is that part of human feeling where we are all different.
...
Ninety percent of our feelings is stuff in which we are all the same and we feel the same things. So, from the very beginning, when we made the pattern language, we concentrated on that fact, and concenrtrated on that part of human experience and feeling where our feeling is all the same.

Alright, Mr. Alexander, I'm with you, but tentatively.

He starts to get into other stuff in the preface, in later pages, that both resonates with me and provokes within me a great doubt. He says that there is a problem which arose as a result of what he calls the "20th century mechanistic view[point]", which is in short built upon the idea that facts can only be mechanistic, and that other things are strictly personal and private and cannot be facts.
I'm with him here, but tentatively.

He says that the idea of order which he presents must allow for aesthetic statements that are true or false.

I don't think we have access to objective data -- we don't have access to facts -- but what we do have is the phenomenon of perception, our phenomenal models, subjective data, and statistics. When Alexander says "Ninety percent of our feelings is stuff in which we are all the same," there are always outliers. But I also agree that to a huge degree we can make claims about aesthetic appeal that are nigh universal. To describe a statistically accurate claim about a solution that works for "everyone" as a fact is erasing a thousand, a million perspectives. I'm not down with that.

But at the same time, I think there is incredible value in getting away from the idea that we are all individual, that we are divided into four, ten, twelve archetypes, in order to focus on the, as Alexander says, ninety percent where we tend to be identical. We run on extremely similar hardware, software, wetware, whatever.

I could use a word for these usually-facts about what it is to be human.

I expect Alexander will not give me this word, but given this context, almost a simple translational trick to allow his words to suit my particular perspective (or what to me is, I suppose, a more true way of conceiving of human information generally), I have hope that this book will deliver unto me great and deep insight.

P. 32, 33, under the heading 3 / A NEW CONCEPT OF "LIFE"
. . . we do feel that there are different degrees of life in things . . . this feeling rather strongly shared by almost everyone.
. . .
When we see waves in the sea, we do certainly feel that they have a kind of life. We feel their life as a real thing, they move us.
. . .
We often see a piece of wood and marvel at its life; another piece of wood feels more dead.
. . .
All I hope to do, so far, is to encourage the reader to begin thinking that this might not be merely a metaphor, or an anthropocentric view.

Define anthropocentric!
"regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals."
"interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences."

I'm still very interested in this book but I can see Alexander's perspective clashing quite hard against my own. He writes that we feel different degrees of life in things, and though I cannot ask him how he uses 'anthropocentric' (nor do I think that would necessarily be a fruitful endeavour were it possible), to me this can only ever be an anthropocentric pursuit.

He speaks as a human about human experience to humans about a feeling shared by humans: 'life'. This obviously can only revolve around an "[interpretation] or [regard] of the world in terms of human values and experiences." Alexander wants his concept of life to be objective, to be science. I want objective science to admit its inescapably anthropocentric foundation. This is not at all a bad thing. It is, I believe, wholly in line with Alexander's conception of life, rooted in human feeling. Science should seek to be alive.

P. 30
even though strictly speaking an ecological system is not alive, because it does not meet the definition of a self-replicating organism . . . [we call it alive.]
The mixture of natural and man-made which exists in any city . . . raises complicated questions of definition, which we have hardly begun to answer. . . we have obviously non-living systems mixed in with the living systems . . . clearly [the non-living systems] do have a vital role in the overall life of the larger systems. If we adhere to the purely mechanistic picture of life, we are stuck with preservationist adherence to ecological nature in its purest form --- just as ecological purists have in fact been stuck with the idea that they must keep nature "as it is," because this is the only way they can define clearly what they want to do. The moment we want to treat the more complex system of buildings and nature together, as one living system, we . . . no longer have an adequate scientific definition of what we are trying to do. For example, according to present-day biological terminology, a city is not a living system, even though it is often referred to as a living system by social scientists in search of a metaphor.

P. 33
. . . this might not be merely a metaphor, or an anthropocentric view.

Alexander speaks in terms of scientific definitions. But science is a living system, too: a complex mixture of non-living systems and living systems. He seems to miss the fact that science might be as dead or alive as a city. (Or maybe he takes it so for granted that he does not believe it worth mention: see the next quote, where he says "we experience degree of life . . . as a fact about the world"

P. 35
. . . we experience degree of life as an essential concept which goes to the heart of our feelings about the natural world, and what nourishes us fundamentally, as a fact about the world.

P. 40, under the heading 7 / THE FEELING OF LIFE IN TRADITIONAL BUILDINGS AND WORKS OF ART
. . . unconcerned, hand painted, repeating but not repeating, harmonious in their similarity, unworried in their inventiveness.

I feel the need to just repeat this by my own hand a few times. Unconcerned. Hand-painted. Repeating but not repeating. Repeating, but not repeating. Repeating but not repeating. Harmonious, in their similarity. Unworried, in their inventiveness.

Harmonious in their similarity, unworried in their inventiveness, repeating but not repeating.

repeating but not repeating.

repeating but not repeating. this phrase reminds me of so many things, so many things. first you can see that i am obviously repeating... I've been doing this when I write things now and then. I repeat things because I notice how it feels different and meaningfully different the second time, the third time. repeating but not repeating.

secondly. there was something i read long ago about a person who recited some mantra for an hour, the same phrase over and over again, but the writer said that the reciter said it 'differently' each time (even though it was the same) giving each utterance its own individual attention. repeating but not repeating.

thirdly. in ugly feelings, specifically quoted here (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=342.msg1472#msg1472),

""Scenes are magnified not by repetition, but by repetition with a difference . . . Sheer repetition of experience characteristically evokes adaptation, which attenuates, rather than magnifies, the connected scenes""

'sheer repetition . . . attenuates', each repetition does something different, something more, something less . . . and repetition 'with a difference' does something different still from that. in both instances: repeating without repeating. in the first, the human mind rejects the effect of the thing that repeats. repeating but diminishing. in the second, the human mind accepts the repeated effect of the thing that repeats without repeating.

repeating but not repeating.

P. 50
. . . the feeling of greater life does appear from time to time . . . during the 20th century. . . . In part, these examples feel alive because they are --- as far as possible --- concept-free. They are not based on images, or on ideas of reality, but instead they have reality itself coming to life in them in a free way. . . . the ordinary process of daily life, uncontaminated by ideas or notions of what to do, has unfolded in a way that . . . make us very comfortable, because we recognize them as genuine. . . . Since it is our main intention to make things which feel alive in our own time, it is these modern versions which must especially inspire us.

P. 60
These things are all beautiful, but they are all damaged. Life itself is damaged, and nothing which is perfect can be truly alive.

P. 60, 61
. . . the very great craft and subtlety of the great Isfahan mosque and its tile-work, where the outward perfection again hides the drunkenness, the careless abandon in the individual bits of tilework that allowed the artist, drunk in self, to make a free thing in the flowers he put in the glaze.
   What impresses us about all these examples is that they have a kind of blitheness or serenity, an innocent and simple quality. . . . Their easiness takes the breath away. . . . They have a simplicity beyond artifice.

I can't get completely on board, as usual, but one of the last things he says, still, is "The deep order which produces life . . . can be described and understood."

So describe it, Alexander! I want to understand it, as a fellow Alexander!!!

P. 64
. . . I want to . . . persuade the reader that . . . the different degree of life we observe in every different part of space is not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects.
//
As previously stated, I REALLY cannot get on board with this, haha. Still... I'm waiting for the point where Alexander stops saying what he intends to do and attempts to do it. Come on, dude.

Hmm. I'm reading through the next bit, and I feel again as though I, we, are returning to this same place, this same double-ended disagreement, agreement from opposite directions. Repeating but not repeating.

Alexander says that the degrees of life are "not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects". I almost, almost, almost agree with this, but my agreement hinges upon a condition I may never have confirmed or denied: the objectively real physical phenomenon is defined by the particular detection our cognition performs upon it.

Some examples:

- The colour red
"Red" is an objectively real physical phenomenon which can be mathematically described (though not perfectly -- people can disagree on whether certain orange-like shades are red or not) but such a description is completely dependent on an artifact of our cognition!

- A happy smile
The mouth that wears a smile is an objectively real physical phenomenon (etc etc), but the boundaries and definition, the value of a smile, these are completely dependent on an artifact of our cognition...

To revisit Alexander's "the different degree of life we observe in every different part of space is not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects.":
Fine, perhaps our cognition is detecting some physical phenomenon which you have labelled life -- its value is likewise objective, based on an objective artifact of our cognition, an arbitrary consequence of whatever processes produced our very existences.

The phenomenon... The problem I have been having is that I do not believe the boundaries were created objectively. The label. If I have a universe that is a series of numbers, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, can I describe the sub-series of numbers "3 4 5" as a phenomenon? Is it an objective phenomenon within the universe of that series, in that it exists, or must a phenomenon have some meaning or value? It certainly is a piece of the universe. Hmm.

Alexander has brought up religion and objectiveness enough so far that I strongly suspect that he believes his life to be some objective value that humans are detecting within the universe. This is the perspective I cannot side with.

It is perhaps a deeply profound shared human value, something that runs to the core of every or near every human being, but it is at its core anthropocentric, or perhaps somewhere between anthropocentric and biological, something that is valued commonly by living things on earth. I still believe we are machines. Perhaps the misery there is that I hold a belief that itself is not one valued by life; my perspective is incompatible with biological comfort; my viewpoint is itself not alive.

Alas. I will try to work my way out of this one, but never backwards. Only through.

It is "merely" an artifact of our cognition, but that "merely" is hurting me.
It is an artifact of our cognition, and that truth must be beauty enough.

End of Chapter Two.
I'm not sure I will read more, but I might.

Alexander proposes that "every part of a building . . . has its degree of life" or that "the degree of life of different things and places [exists] in every single thing there is".
At this point I am entirely convinced that the problem here is one of projection, but on an extremely large scale. Alexander is not projecting his feelings about an object into the object, but rather a statistically salient number of people's feelings about an object into the object. He has a great wealth of experience, no doubt.

He places these common human feelings "into" the objects, when in fact they lie in the eye of the beholder, or the billion eyes of a half-billion beholders, or at its greatest extent the countless eyes of every human beholder to have ever existed or who ever will...
This is such an important topic to me that I've thought about a lot, which is why I keep repeating myself, and why I've read as far as I have. I want to be able to get it out correctly, to say it right.

Christopher Alexander, inescapably human, claims that a "degree of life of different things and places [exists] in every single thing there is." But he is simply describing his judgement, simple as that. It is only natural that the owner of a brain that is capable of judging some value of any object will come to believe that such a value might not exist within themselves but within those objects...

In some ways I wish I could have faith in his particular belief about how the world works, rather than my particular belief about how the world works. But I've already mourned that above.

I've read a few pages into this chapter, tentatively, and while I will continue to express my particular reservations about how my perspective differs from Alexander (our difference 'repeating but not repeating' each time -- it feels like a development of my own perspective, testing it against his own as it appears in different contexts), I hope that doesn't get away from the love I feel about his ideas otherwise. Alexander's idea that this is 'mathematical' and 'objective', I can take it or leave it, but it's obviously of great importance to him, this aspect of the metaphor, so whatever helped him get here, I'll accept as necessary debris.

Alexander uses this example of a dot in the middle of a piece of paper to get at wholeness and centers. I've recreated most of his diagrams in the image above. (Oops! I forgot the 'halo' around the dot. Imagine a final grey line indicator of a smallish circle of the area immediately next to the dot.)

P. 82
. . . including the main entity of the sheet itself, there are at least twenty entities created in the space of the paper by the dot. . . . when we place the dot, these zones become marked in some way, they become visible, they stand out. In some fashion they become coherent, or differentiated, where before they were not. Although the precise nature of these entities is not yet clear, the thing that matters is that they have become more visible, marked, stronger.

[ . . . a list of twenty entities, e.g. 6. Right-hand rectangle trapped by dot, 17. Diagonal ray from dot to nearest corner. . . . ]

The basic idea of the wholeness . . . these stronger zones or entities, together, define the structure which we recognize as the wholeness of the sheet of paper with the dot.

P. 83
The entities which come into existence in a configuration are not merely cognitive. They have a real mathematical existence, and are actually occurring features of the space itself.

//

Haha! As if math is not itself merely cognitive.
And yet math also is real! A cognitive construct is real. A cognitive construct may contains truths, deep and profound.

P. 84
There is a . . . reason for thinking of the coherent entities in the world as centers, not as wholes. If I want to be accurate about a whole, it is natural for me to ask where that whole starts and stops. Suppose, for example, I am talking about a fishpond, and want to call it a whole. To be accurate . . . I want to be able to draw a precise boundary around this whole . . . Obviously the water is part of the fishpond. What about the concrete it is made, or the clay under the ground . . . the air which is just above  . . . the pipes bringing in the water? . . . These are uncomfortable questions, and they are not trivial.
. . .
The pond does exist. Our trouble is that we don't know how to define it exactly. . . . When I call the pond a center, the situation changes. I can then recognize the fact that the pond does have existence as a local center of activity: a living system. It is a focused entity. But the fuzziness of its edges becomes less problematic. The reason is that the pond, as an entity, is focused towards its center. It creates a field of centeredness. But, obviously, this effect falls off. The peripheral things play their role in the pond.

In the previous quote I cut out Alexander's use of "mathematical", but I think to make my point I need to bring it back in. "There is a mathematical reason for thinking of the coherent entities in the world as centers," is the full first sentence, unedited.

Here is my breakdown of what he's saying about wholes and centers and mathematics.

• There is a mathematical reason for calling things 'centers' and not 'wholes'
• In mathematical theory, to define a 'whole' I must define its boundaries
• Real objects do not have mathematically clear boundaries
• Therefore I will use the mathematically vague term 'center' which does not provoke the theorizing of boundaries

The thing is it seems that Alexander is invoking a semantic trick to get out of mathematics, or I could say, out of the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint. He could just as well say

• Mathematical theory likes boundaries
• Real objects do not have mathematically clear boundaries
• Therefore I will not use mathematical theory

BUT! The precision, and perhaps legitimacy under our modern-day viewpoint, afforded by mathematics and mathematical theory is too great for Alexander to resist. That is not to say or even imply his theories are intentionally crafted to win legitimacy. This is something people do automatically to themselves, within themselves, all the time: justify and rationalize what they know to be true by coming up with a way to explain it that appeals to their values and worldview, which is itself partially impressed upon them by the outside, by society, by the people they know, by the world around them, by their knowledge and learning.

P. 85
if I call [the kitchen sink] a center . . . it creates a sense, in my mind, of the way the sink is going to work in the kitchen. It makes me aware of the larger pattern of things, and the way this particular element -- the kitchen sink -- fits into that pattern, plays its role in that pattern. It makes the sink feel more like a thing which radiates out, extends beyond its own boundaries, and takes its part in the kitchen as a whole.
. . .
The same is true of all the entities which appear in the world. . . . When I think of them as centers, I become more aware of their relatedness; I see them as focal points in a larger unbroken whole and I see the world as whole.

There is an imprecision that I am coming to value, this idea that there is no whole to understand. Here Alexander says "I see the world as whole", and in some ways this is certainly a convenient perspective. The world is rather whole. But it's also completely wrong: the world is just another center. In The Timeless Way of Building, Alexander presents the concept of patterns as things nested within one another, always. It's refreshing, freeing, to think of everything as a center, a center of something, a participant in something larger that exists but which does not necessarily need to be discussed or understood -- and certainly not as a whole. Every center is the center of another, greater, center. Every entity is a participant in another, greater, entity.

Right, I'm getting ahead of myself. From a first-person perspective let us say that anything we perceive to be whole... cannot be understood as an object itself. Oh, no, I finally understand 'everything is connected.' It really is. To the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint which seeks to understand wholes, that's terrifying, overwhelming. But I think the point is to let go, to understand by not understanding. You cannot completely understand an apple by studying the apple, you must study the apple tree too. But you cannot completely understand an apple tree by studying the apple tree, you must study the land from which it grows. But you cannot understand the land... and so on, forever.

You must understand that you can never understand the apple seed.

P. 86
. . . people believe today that every whole is made of parts. The key aspect of this belief is the idea that the parts come "before" the whole: in short, the parts exist as elements of some kind, which are them brought into relationship with one another . . . and a center is "created" out of these parts and their combinations as a result.
   I believe accurate understanding of wholeness is quite different. When we understand what wholeness is really like as a structure, we see that in most case it is the wholeness which creates its parts.


P. 87
We may see the phenomenon as I believe it to be in the two-dot example [pictured above], where the visible things that look like parts are induced by teh whole. Thus the visible diagonal in the case of two dots is something we might call one of its "parts." But it is not a pre-existing element. It is a part which is induced by the action of the whole. . . . In no sense at all is it an element from which the center is built.

I've recently read Emergence (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=352.0) which describes how a whole, an incredibly beautiful whole, can arise from parts. And, like any good 20th century mechanistic viewpoint zealot, I believe it.

Again, what I think Alexander is describing is the way the brain works. It is not, as Alexander claims, that he is describing a way the world works that is more true than the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint, but that it sits better in the mind. And this is extremely powerful. It's really, really valuable to know how the brain likes to think about things, and valuable to value it.

I don't agree with the way Alexander has chosen to value the brain - by taking its natural patterns and claiming that they describe the true nature of the world - but I deeply value his insight on the brain's natural patterns. For me it's not at all just about the mechanical way the brain likes to chop things up and perceive things; it is mainly about the pleasure of using the brain for what it's good at, the humaneness of building a world, a life, out of appealing to what humans are. What we all are. What you are, what I am.

I only ever want to make art for a human. For the appreciator. For the artist. For someone.

P. 90, under header "8 / THE FUNDAMENTAL ENTITIES OF WHICH THE WORLD IS MADE"

. . . What exactly . . . is wholeness? . . . It is a structure which . . . we intuitively perceive as the gestalt, the overview, the broad nature of a thing. . . .

   This wholeness gets its strength from the coherent spatial centers of which it is made. If there are roses around a front door of a cotage, that is what you remember; if there is a pair of ducks in the garden, and a fishpond, it is the ducks and fishpond you remember . . . the roses, the ducks, . . . are all centers, and it is these entities or centers which mark something as what it is, which make it memorable, remarkable. . . .

. . . If a building has a skating rink outside, like Rockefeller Plaza in New York, it is the skating and the skaters we remember.
   These are the explicit, obvious centers. And they are not only spatial. Other centers, some hidden, some hardly visible in the space, but latent, or biological, or social, . . .

   The wholeness of any portion of the world is this system of larger and smaller centers

P. 91
All the centers together, explicit ones and hidden ones together, form the wholeness . . . in any given part of the world at any moment.

P. 95
In our conceptual picture of the house, we have things called street, garden, roof, front door, and so on. But the centers or entities which hit my eye when I take it all in as a whole are slightly different. I see the sunny part of the garden where the sun is falling on the lawn as a center --- not the entire "garden." I see the swath of space which unites front steps, front path, and front stoop, . . . I see the roofline and the light and shadow of the eave, . . . The path to the front door, and the steps from the back porch, and the door itself, the door of the house, all work as a unit, as a continuous center about 40 feet long.
. . .
The house-garden complex seen in its wholeness is truer perceptually and more accurate functionally than any analytic vision of the house or lot or garden taken by themselves.

"truer perceptually," says Alexander, which again speaks to his perpetual goal, to justify this concept with regard to this mechanistic viewpoint... He claims that seeing the house-garden complex according to the human brain's natural impulses is "truer perceptually," which is either false or unknowable, unless one is willing to define truth itself in an anthropocentric or solipsistic sense...

It is "more accurate functionally" with regards to common human aesthetic appeal, because what Alexander is describing is common human aesthetic appeal itself. This has a deep, immense, profoundly human value, but don't assign truth based on human values. Find human values and apply them to one's choices after making the genuine attempt to see the truth as accurately as possible... The truth is not human, is it? Can it be? I am a human, so in some sense the truths I can admit are always human-touched.

This sure is a struggle. What is truth? Why am I so convinced that what I believe to be the truth is not what Christopher Alexander believes to be the truth? This is an epistemological question that's going to give me hell for a long time. Either I need to grab the Beginning of Infinity out of the library again, or I need to accept some weird form of phenomenal truth.

It's so hard for me to read this book. Do I put myself in the mindset of Alexander and for now allow myself to believe in W, in this objective wholeness he proposes to exist in the world? Do I keep myself out of it and fight it at every turn? Do I stop reading?

He writes, "I am firmly convinced that the nature and behavior of buildings and other artifacts can only be understood within the context of this structure." And I . . . agree . . . nature and behaviour and everything can only be understood within the context of the structure of what our human brains are capable of recognizing. An incredibly deep pattern recognition is at work in our heads, in our lives, inescapable.

". . efforts to explain it in more mechanical fashion will go on failing, . . ." writes Alexander, but I have seen the demons of pandemonium (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=352.msg1411#msg1411) -- we cannot understand even rudimentary emergent systems in the mechanical details, but we can set the wheels in motion and observe as they perform. I don't see this ever crossing the bridge into "sentience," rather I see it as dissecting a joke, a frog, and killing it . . . It's a sad thing. At one time I thought the mechanistic viewpoint would help me understand the wonderful elements of the world, but I suppose every time it happens it merely takes the wonder out of them! To learn is to demystify . . .

What am I saying?

Basically, I think I am asking what constitutes an "understanding" of how a thing works. If I can write a program that produces a complex output, do I "understand" how it works? If every part of the process has been built by human hands, can we "explain it" in a "mechanical fashion", or has it crossed the veil of complexity? Are better explanations good for us? Not as masters of the universe, but as friends of it.

Is there an antiepistemological perspective which advocates for knowingly closing one's eyes to the truth, and by knowingly I mean embracing what one chooses to know as something other than the truth? "Ignorance is bliss." Is there a healthy way to go about this? Perhaps to ask questions only half of each day. To ask questions only in daylight, or at nighttime. To ask questions only sometimes, and to stop asking the rest of the time.

If only I could.

It makes me so mad to keep reading this (for reasons already stated)! But I have been thinking about a lens of party planning (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=371), of designing spaces which allow play -- life, even! -- to emerge, and this next chapter title is so, so tempting, seen through this lens.

Let's do it.

He describes how a garden at the end of a terrace encourages life, encourages children to run back and forth -- and would encourage and older person to do the same but slower. Staying at a particular place in a hotel... this place was full of life, it was alive.
I like this one very small example given of an electric light on a pillar (p.114) "There is an electric light mounted on the column, a very ordinary light . . . The [column] becomes a little more intense because the lamp is just there. . . .this is not automatic. If the light were lower down, or asymmetrically mounted, or a more obtrusive shape, this would not happen." And here he explains some more of how it comes about (p.114-115) "Suppose we have two centers A and B, and we want to know if B is helping A or not. We simply look at A with B, and A without B, and go back and forth between the two, using the criterion of life to decide which of the two, A with B or A without B, has more life."

It's simple! As far as I can recall, the criterion of life is "look at it and ask yourself which has more life". That's it. There's nothing complex or special about it. Looking at a column, how do you know where, or whether, to place an electric light on it? You just . . . look. You look and you decide and you do it. It's really that simple, and it hurts me to think that top-down planning has damaged the ability for people to make these small and simple decisions.

"Which placement is more aesthetically appealing?"

This simple, simple question is something a person should always be able to answer, should be afforded the opportunity to answer as frequently as possible in their lives, I think.

I often get caught up in (let's call them) disagreements like these.

I was putting the dishes in the dishwasher and generally cleaning up the kitchen when I inquired of myself:

"Why are you making a big deal out of this?" "What's at stake here?"

I answered immediately, dramatically, "The nature of existence!"

Then I realized I had fallen into the trap set by Mr. Alexander for himself:

It is not the nature of existence at stake, but one perspective, one phenomenal model of billions, of reality.

That is still important, but should my model of reality change, reality itself does not. It's not that important.

P. 132
[..] a mature artist can use the recursion of living centres in a very powerful way, thus creating centres which have still more life, which extract far tougher and more profound life from one another, and which create, overall, an even greater intensity.

P. 134
.. It has living structure, solidly and deeply built throughout its fabric. [..] this fact must be respected. Sneering at [..] depth of structure as a possible goal, as some contemporary architects have done, is a profound mistake.

I like this "depth in structure", this "recursion of living centres"... attention paid at each step down, so that there is always another centre, and another, however closely one looks.

P. 138
Artists are aware, all too often, that a work can be made or broken by something that seems, to an outsider, a nearly trivial difference: a tiny spot of color, the shape of a curve. [..] a few percent makes the difference between profound feeling and triviality.

What I like about this is that it captures what the artist does as essential, rather than frivolous. In a results-oriented setting these minuscule changes are so easily steamrolled by not being explicable.

I have tended to defend this type of small detail work by defending the artist's whims. But perhaps that is not the right approach... I could learn to perceive and appreciate the wholeness, the inexplicable.

P. 139
.. it is not enough for the centres to merely be present....each of those one hundred centres must be drawn in such a way that it is beautiful and has its own strength.
   It is also instructive to find out how hard it is to draw all one hundred centres as strong, living centres even when you know what they are.

Page 140 contains Alexander's description of how the creation of lines, curves, and shapes.. is distinct from the creation of centres. They exist in relation to one another. Changing one to fix it may set another one off. "It takes enormous skill and concentration to draw the pattern so that all the centres at once have their full strength."

In the previous chapter Alexander claimed to have identified fifteen rules which "control the ways that living centres can be made from other centres". I don't know exactly what this means but it's possible this is going to be a very very practical list.

This is an incredible chapter. Everything has been making sense, and I haven't felt the need to grab anything as a quote. Uh. . . Like, I could list the properties, and I might still do that just as a reference at some point. There is one interesting thing I'd like to quote.

P. 189-190, describing LOCAL SYMMETRIES
. . . Each strip was 7 squares long, and was composed of 3 black squares and 4 white squares, arranged in different arrangements. There are 35 possible strips of this kind.
    First, we established that the relative coherence of the different patterns --- operationally defined as ease of perception --- was . . . an objective measure of cognitive processing, roughly the same for everyone.
. . .
We found that, whether we used ease of description, ease of memorization, subjectively judged "simplicity," or ease of recognition in a tachistoscope [(an instrument used for exposing objects to the eye for a very brief measured period of time)], the relative coherences as measured by these different experiments were very strongly correlated.
. . .
the relative degree of coherence . . . was rather constant from person to person.

P. 215
. . . an apparent roughness. Our current tendency is to dismiss this house as an archaic building, rough only because the techniques of fabrication forced it to be rough because the techniques could not be precise. . . . More modern construction techniques that will be available in the future, will, like nature, once again be more capable of making such an organic structure and we shall, by then, no longer be ashamed of it.

Ah . . . I realize now that I am surrounded by dead things. I live in dead spaces. So . . . so depressing.

I must learn to notice and appreciate life where I can.

P. 221, functional notes for ECHOES
   A practical example: In a well-made old barn, all the different parts are somehow made in the same way --- adzed beams and columns, pegged and mortised, so that they come from a single family. This arises from practical functional consideration. Often, when all the different details are members of a family, the task of making the building becomes simpler, the rhythm of making it faster, more economical. It can produce the necessary variety without trouble. If, on the other hand, the details are disparate, it is such an effort, mentally, to make the building at all, that there is less room for variation and invention. The result: in a building without echoes, the final adaptation of the building to its needs is often weaker. . . . chances are that certain deep requirements have been ignored, and the variety of non-echoing forms will cause various functional failures.

//

I think about this with regard to the self-imposed limitation of pixel art without mixels and rotated pixels and out-of-scale pixels, that sort of thing. I've written several times a piece of code that positions a pixelated cursor 'above' and outside of the pixelated Godot viewport, but forces it to maintain the same scale, keeps its position locked to the grid. It's more than ease of use -- though in this instance it's extra work to maintain the echo, I think if I let it slide in one place, I might as well let it slide in more places. Once the echo habit is broken, or let us say, expanded, once the barriers are broken, more becomes possible. There are more possibilities, more possible answers to more possible questions. Alexander writes, ". . . when all the different details are members of a family, the task of making the [thing] becomes simpler, the rhythm of making it faster, more economical. It can produce the necessary variety without trouble." (emphasis mine.) This implies there is also an unnecessary variety.

I believe that is what mixels are, what they give access to, what they open the door to.
They make the task of making the thing more complex, the rhythm of making it worse, less economical.

Unnecessary variety.

//

P. 221
   When functions are taken seriously, there are usually various geometric rules which follow, as a result of functional conditions. These rules, applied over and over again, will create a feeling of familiar angles, lines, shapes, not for formal reasons, but simply as a result of careful adherence to functional requirements.

P. 233, on not-separateness
If you believe that the thing you are making is self-sufficient, if you are trying to show how clever you are, to make something that asserts its beauty, you will fall into the error of losing, [of] failing, not-separateness. The correct connection to the world will only be made if you are conscious, willing, that the thing you make be indistinguishable from its surroundings; that, truly, you cannot tell where one ends and the next begins, and you do not even want to be able to do so. . . . This quality, geometrically, depends especially on the state of the boundary. In things which have not-separateness, there is often a fragmented boundary, an incomplete edge, which destroys the hard line. . . . the actual boundary is sometimes rather careless, deliberately placed to avoid any simple complete sharp cutting off of the thing from its surroundings --- a randomness in the actual boundary line which allows the thing to be connected to the world.

The way each of these fifteen properties blend into one another is beautiful, in following themselves. There are echoes between the properties, a non-separateness, an ambiguity as to where one ends and another begins.

Not-separateness relies on deep interlock and ambiguity, which in turn describes the nature of boundaries: those boundaries must have a roughness to them, but also contrast. The center should have echoes of things outside. . .

repeating but not repeating.

Nowhere in the book do I find a plain text list of the fifteen properties and I suppose this must be on purpose. They have a natural quality this way, a running-togetherness. On the pages 239-241 there are a list of the fifteen properties but accompanied by drawings and additional descriptive words. The closest is, on page 144, this block of text:

Quote                           [..] 1. LEVELS OF
SCALE,  2.  STRONG CENTERS,  3.  BOUNDARIES,
4.   ALTERNATING  REPETITION,   5.  POSITIVE
SPACE, 6.  GOOD SHAPE, 7. LOCAL  SYMMETRIES,
8.  DEEP INTERLOCK  AND  AMBIGUITY, 9.  CON-
TRAST,   10.   GRADIENTS,   11.   ROUGHNESS,
12. ECHOES, 13. THE VOID, 14. SIMPLICITY AND
INNER CALM, 15. NOT-SEPARATENESS.

~ Lists (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=2470)

When I came upon that block of text for the first time I was a little frustrated that this was the way these properties were being presented, a little confused that they would be allowed to run together, to none of them take center stage on their own line . . . it wasn't a really bad feeling, it compelled me to move forward and take in each one in turn, in depth. And now, thinking back to my response, I am fond of the way they are presented, none of them alone, the boundary between item to item somewhat ambiguous. Whether serendipitous or not, I am fond of many features of this block of text.

I'm often frustrated when reading large dense nonfiction books when there is no good wrap-up, no good concluding summary, no good clear overview of a topic. I'm making my peace with it; there isn't always a good list for me to take away. Lists that prize separateness in their items are nice lists, but perhaps are not alive.

~ Lists (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=497)

It makes me so mad to keep reading this (for reasons already stated)! But I have been thinking about a lens of party planning (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=371), of designing spaces which allow play -- life, even! -- to emerge, and this next chapter title is so, so tempting, seen through this lens.

Let's do it.



P. 244
A skeptical reader could . . . make relatively light of these claims. According to a "cognitive" interpretation, the centers could merely exist in the mind's eye (as products of cognition), and the fifteen properties, which apparently make the centers work, could also exist merely as artifacts of cognition. According to such an interpretation, it might be said that buildings and works of art look good when they are made of centers in the way I have described, simply because they correspond somehow to deep cognitive structures --- that is, to the way human perception and cognition work. In this interpretation, these explanations would be a powerful way of understanding the psychology of buildings and works of art --- and would tell us something important and significant about visual phenomena in the world.

//

I have been called out. I was finally getting into this book and was happy to let this question of objective world vs phenomenal model sit on the back burner, in the pantry, in the  freezer, but here Alexander is making it clear that he intends to directly challenge this precise difference in perspective. Well.

I have feelings about this, but I can't tell whether they're good or not.

As I read this next section about the fifteen properties in nature, it occurs to me that my '"cognitive" interpretation' stops at the mind when it could go a step further -- the mind is this way, yes, but why? It seems to make sense that the mind's pattern-recognition should have some purpose. Basic human-nature aesthetics must come from somewhere. It must be based on perceiving something for gain.

P. 261 - 262, on POSITIVE SPACE in nature
In the majority of naturally developed wholes, the wholes and spaces between wholes form an unbroken continuum. This arises because the wholes form "from the inside" according to their specific functional organization . . . illustrated in the next page, [in the example] of ink flowing in gelatin, the river of ink has its own laws and its own pressure, as does the gelatin. The same thing happens with the crystals which take on coherent polyhedral shapes as they butt into each other while they grow.
. . .
In the crazing of porcelain . . . As the surface cools, the glaze shrinks, forming cracks. The areas bounded by cracks are coherent in shape because the cracks follow maximum stress lines and form in such a way to relieve maximum stress. As a result, the areas bounded by the cracks all turn out to have good shape, more or less compact, and all about the same size.

P. 267, on LOCAL SYMMETRIES in nature
. . . these symmetries occur in nature because there is no reason for asymmetry; an asymmetry only occurs when it  is forced. Thus, for instance, a water drop, falling through the air, is asymmetrical along its length, because the flow-field is differentiated in the direction of the fall,  but symmetrical around its vertical axis, because there is no differentiation between any one horizontal direction and any other. In short, things tend to be "equal" unless there are particular forces making them equal.

There is something from an earlier page itching at me. I enjoy producing and observing simulations... the idea has occurred to me that the 'real' way to produce such a 'natural'-feeling thing is to, indeed, simulate such flow fields, such natural symmetries in the forces at play in the work.

Whereas Alexander puts these 'properties' first, supposing that the properties themselves are what 'create life'. In other words, Alexander seems to propose that these properties are the source of life, rather than signifiers of life.

I do not mean to minimize the significance of signifiers of life: it is truly remarkable to think that art arises from an appeal to the innate human sense for life, not merely pattern recognition, but a form of pattern recognition evolved to find life beautiful.

What does it even mean for something to 'have life'? If we (humans) possess an inherent ability to detect features which signify 'life' that has a highly sophisticated rate of success, why should I care whether a thing truly has 'life' or whether I am simply learning the art of crafting false positives?

These false positives may very well be a deep and profound sense of beauty. Supposing we all live on the same, or similar, software as the creatures we relate to most, an appealing place which is recognized as having 'life' will in fact attract life, draw it in, make it feel welcome and . . . indeed, alive.

P. 210 - 212, on ROUGHNESS
. . . we probably attribute this charm [the charm of ROUGHNESS] to the fact that the bowl is handmade and that we can see, in the roughness, the trace of a human hand, and know therefore that it is personal, full of human error.
     This interpretation is fallacious, and has entirely the wrong emphasis. The reason that this roughness in the design contributes so greatly to the wholeness . . . throughout the design the subtle variation of the brush-strokes and their spacing, are done in such a way that each brush-stroke has a size perfectly suited to its place . . . exactly where it needs to be to create the most beautiful and positive white space between the strokes . . . this simply could not be obtained if the brush-strokes were all exactly the same size, or placed at exactly equal intervals.
. . .
The seemingly rough arrangement is more precise because it comes from a much more careful guarding of the essential centres in the design. . . . Roughness can never be consciously or deliberately created. Then it is merely contrived. To make a thing live, its roughness must be the product of egolessness, the product of no will. . . . in a spirit of childish abandon --- certainly not with a careful, contrived desire to make it "interesting." In this sense, roughness is always the product of abandon --- it is created whenever a person is truly free, and doing only whatever is essential[.]

[PINGBACK: ugly feelings, post #32 (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=342.msg1587#msg1587)]

P. 269, on LOCAL SYMMETRIES IN NATURE
A Rorschach blot is symmetrical as a whole, but possesses no significant symmetries at lower scales. This kind of form, random at lower levels but symmetrical in the large, is relatively uncommon in nature. Contrast it with snow crystals which [are symmetrical in the whole but also] display symmetries at many levels.

PART TWO

P. 298
. . . you may agree, I hope, . . . that the nature of order as I have defined it, in principle at least can finally bridge the gap that Alfred North Whitehead called "the bifurcation of nature." It unites the objective and subjective, it shows us that order . . . is both rooted in substance and rooted in feeling, is at once objective in a scientific sense, yet also substantial in the sense of poetry, . . . It means that the four-hundred-year-old split created between objective and subjective, and the separation of humanities and arts from science and technology can one day disappear . . . in a synthesis which opens the door to a form of living in which we may be truly human.
     Above all, this is the threshold of a new kind of objectivity.

P. 308 - 309, on SIMPLE HAPPINESS
life --- because of its structures, the field of centers --- is inextricably connected with human feeling. . . . things [with life] are important. We cannot separate them, or our awareness of them, from the fact that they have feeling and induce feeling in us.
     This deep feeling is indeed a mark of life in things. . . . we become happy in the presence of [this].
. . .
     In this idea, we shall cross the nearly uncrossable gulf created by the Cartesian view of things and extend our grasp to a new post-Cartesian view. In the Cartesian view, the objective structure of the world is one thing, our own happiness is something entirely different and remote from it. In the post-Cartesian view, the wholeness of the world and our feeling of happiness together are understood to be two complementary things which form a single unity.

//

The post-Cartesian view... Alexander is making more and less sense to me again. Especially under the next header, FEELING AS THE INWARD ASPECT OF LIFE, he reasserts his position suggested by this last sentence that he really is speaking about reality as... to me, it sounds like some kind of place that really is made of "person-stuff" (he uses this term), while also insisting that this is not an anthropocentric perspective...

But I love so much of this. I feel as though an anthropocentric perspective is what is needed, is what I need. Not a naively pre-Cartesian perspective, but a self-aware anthropocentrism. This is what the post-Cartesian represents --- not a rejection of the truth of the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint, but a rejection of the centrality of that truth to human lives and values. Our human lives and values must be their own center, marrying Cartesian logic with some pre-Cartesian centering.

The universe does not revolve around us, but we must still revolve around us.

Our understanding of the universe must still revolve around us.

EDIT :: I mixed up Cartesian with Copernican. Some of these thoughts are likely wrongly constructed as a result.

[pingback: Games As Parties (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=374.0)]

P. 312
Centers which have life increase our own life because we ourselves are centers too. . . . we, like other centers, are intensified by them.

//

Chapter seven ends with this long piece concluding in the revelation that the fifteen properties apply to us -- that because centers and properties are about life and are applied to nature that we can apply these properties, and this idea of centers, to ourselves. So far . . . I get it, I love it. I am a center. All the things that Alexander says about centers, which I immediately felt applied to a great number of things, as a deeply powerful abstract concept, have intuitively applied to my thinking about the self, about consciousness, about life, about art, about many things.

But I'm glad that he says it here outright.

P. 316
Suppose you and I are discussing this matter in a coffee shop. I look around on the table for things to use in an experiment. There is a bottle of ketchup on the table and, perhaps, an old-fashioned salt shaker, . . .
I ask you: "Which one of these is more like your own self?" Of course, the question appears slightly absurd. You might legitimately say, "It has no sensible answer."

P. 317
I am asking which of the two objects seems like a better picture of all of you, of the whole of you: a picture which shows you as you are, with all your hopes, fears, weaknesses, glory and absurdity, and which --- as far as possible --- includes everything that you could ever hope to be. In other words, which comes closer to being a true picture of you in all your weakness and humanity; of the love in you, and the hate; of your youth and your age; of the good in you, and the bad; of your past, your present, and your future; of your dreams of what you hope to be, as well as what you are?

[pingback: telling stories to remember life (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=393.msg1705#msg1705)]

[pingback: SYNAPSE ~ The Mirror of the Self (http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=576)]

I think this is a powerful question, and I, from my mechanistic perspective, wish to explain it in mechanistic terms. It has to make mechanical sense, even if I don't want to think about it mechanically, I need to have the mechanisms in mind in order to put them aside. I'm not happy with a magic trick.

First, it certainly is pleasurable, comfortable, meaningful, to encounter an object in the world which speaks to as many facets of me as possible. I like this thing that Alexander is doing! I can relate it to many times when I've encountered deeply resonant works, which are specifically resonant because they connect to more parts of me. My fears, my hopes, my future, my past, everything that is inside of me.

Second, I think that this is some incredible unconscious pattern recognition in action, like when you smell something that reminds you of a time in your life when you smelled the same thing, that's your olfactory pattern recognition --- this is some other pattern recognition, perhaps visual, perhaps conceptual/spatial --- What does it even mean for something to be a picture of you? Of an aspiration, of a sadness? Alexander's wholeness elides the problem of "what symbol represents what?" by focusing on the bigger picture, on the larger cloud of entities full of centers, where centers are symbols, where symbols signify, remind, evoke, something. He doesn't care specifically what it evokes, but targets the cloud of emotions that connects the largest number of people: being human, being alive, being anything at all, existing. Most theories of art I've been exposed to are taking a very mechanistic viewpoint, saying that A evokes B, and having trouble with the inconsistency of that. One thing never makes everyone feel the same emotion.

The pattern-recognition-overwhelm of Alexander's field of centers, of his "wholeness", combined with his stated aesthetic goal of "life", "aliveness", "wholeness" but always in the context of life, produces a richer macro-perspective, a focus on an artistic aesthetic so large and impossibly vast, hugely emergent. His criterion for determining which thing has more life may be restated, "Which makes you feel the greater number of emotions relating to being human?"

It is no great stretch to say that all emotions pertain to humanity, though some would disagree and call a person "inhuman" for feeling a certain way (though often it is more about not feeling a certain way, furthering my argument), so we can simplify this criterion further:


I cannot say what it means to have a "number" of emotions. If I feel sad today and then sad again tomorrow, is that one emotion (i.e. it is the variety we are counting) or are they different, separate, emotions, because they are in different, separate, contexts? Or might two sadnesses felt on two days be "two emotions" or "one emotion" depending on whether the surrounding emotional context has changed?

Alexander speaks to this a little bit here with regard to the temporal nature of feeling:

P. 342
[Real liking] has a simple empirical meaning. Each thing that we like or do not like may be tested for its staying power. If I look at two drawings for the first time, I may like A more than B. But if I pin the two drawings above my bed and look at them every day, live with them hour after hour, day after day, month after month, gradually I will find out which of the two gives me a more permanent, more lasting satisfaction.

I am tempted to specify the requirement a bit. "Which makes you feel the greater number of desirable emotions?"

But what word really fits here? Positive, desirable, constructive . . .

So many feelings that ought to be captured are not exactly positive, but there is a positiveness to the cloud of emotions -- emotions that feeling make you more . . . oh, I'm using his words now . . . more whole.

In any case, I still like his original question. Which one of these is more like your own self? Or this different take on how to ask this question (which seems to reveal to me that Alexander does not think of this as truth (as I keep being concerned about) but as tightly bound to the perceptual field, with the idea of 'objective truth' a sort of framing that has a "primitive" and "operational" effect):

P. 320
We can put the question in a more primitive sense, perhaps, by asking: which one of these two things would I prefer to become by the day of my death?
 . . .
A student of mine formulated the question in another useful operational way. He said, "Assuming for a moment, that you believed in reincarnation, and that you were going to be reborn as one of these two things, then which one would you rather be in your next life?"

P. 349

. . . as I encounter the contradictions and difficulties . . . gradually I start to get rid of all the things which seem good because of images and opinions --- and retain only those which really are full of life. . . . life, as it occurs in buildings or in works of art, can be measured. But it can only be measured, or estimated, in a way which relies on the degree of development, or enlightenment, of the observer.

// I think I prefer the more neutral "nameless quality" name given to what Alexander now calls "life," but I do understand why he does it. I don't entirely disagree but taken out of context it's quite weird.

P. 349
. . . what if, objectively, the phenomenon we call life cannot be measured by any other method? In this situation, the narrow confines of Cartesian method would, arbitrarily, beyond the bounds of what can properly be measured or observed. I suggest that the ugly and lifeless environment which we have been building since the 1950s has come about because public bodies and authoritative opinion have been most comfortable with that which can be measured or discussed within the Cartesian framework. This has then made real quality all but impossible.

// Supposing there is an objective measure of long-term human appeal, which to me is not at all questionable at scale, that is, statistically speaking, and furthermore supposing that only a properly prepared human brain has the capacity to perform such a measurement (so far, and for whatever reason), it stands to reason that an increasing belief in anything other than that measurement tool (e.g. metrics of popularity, or explicable justification) would cause that measure to drop. I am draining every bit of poetry from Alexander's writing here but it is because I am so charmed by it that I must decode it a little before I can really understand what it is I am integrating.

P. 350
. . . the most elementary rules of architecture are (1) ask people what they want and (2) give it to them almost without question, so that the dignity of their inner response is recognized, preserved.

P. 350
I believe that, in all contemporary cultures, people have been robbed of their heritage, not so much because ancient culture has been destroyed, but more because today's prevailing culture robs people of the feeling that is inherent in them, their true feeling, their true liking.

P. 350
. . . true liking is different from one culture to another, still, I am more likely to succeed in creating a thing that a Japanese person truly likes by making a thing that I truly like than by following a handbook of modern regulations in Japanese style. . . . the worldwide advance of money-based democracy has created a profound sameness which is (so far) based on falsehood, on a denial of what it really means to be human.

P. 354-355, under the header TECHNIQUES OF MEASUREMENT, emphasis mine
The essence of the idea behind this measurement is that. . . we ask which one induces, in us, a greater feeling of wholeness. . . .
     Some of the possible questions are:
- Which of the two seems to generate a greater feeling of life in me?
- Which of the two makes me more aware of my own life?
- Which of the two induces (as asked in Akido) a greater harmony in me, in my body and in my mind?
- Which of the two makes me feel a greater wholesomeness in myself?
. . .

// Holy shit it's EMERSION (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=387)

I'm frustrated. I can see Alexander using metaphor to either explain or justify something, going further down this rabbit hole which reminds me so much of The Idea of the World, describing something that I cannot get behind... This continues to come up. I've placed a hold on book two at the library. I simultaneously worry and hope that Alexander will go harder on this -- worry, because then I will not be able to follow where he goes. But hope, because then I can stop reading.

P. 373
The effect [of the geometry of the environment] resembles the effect of trace elements in the human body. . . . they make possible the construction of certain enzymes, which themselves catalyze crucial and highly repetitive components of protein synthesis. . . . they play a catalytic role . . .

. . . The impact of the geometry of our environment---its living or not-living structure---has a similar, nearly trace-like effect on our emotional, social, spiritual, and physical well-being.

//

It needs to be noticed that this is not a line of reasoning but a rhetorical or explanatory device. Probably Alexander employs these quite often, but I can't catch every one... I don't like it. It makes me doubt his evidence.

P. 373
    A healthy human being is able, essentially, to solve problems, to develop, to move toward objects of desire, to contribute to the well-being of others in society, to create value in the world, and to love, to be exhilarated, to enjoy. The capacity to do these many positive things, to do them well, and to do them freely, is natural. It arises by itself. It cannot be created artificially in a person, but it needs to be released, given room. It does need to be supported. It depends, simply, on the degree to which a person is able to concentrate on these things, not on others. . . .
    Of course, it is often said that challenge makes us more alive. . . . The nature of the interference caused by hardship and conflict must therefore be very well understood, and accurately gauged, before we can say that we have a clear picture of its effects --- either negative or positive.

// What? What? Is Christopher Alexander about to talk in some literal game design themes here?

P. 374
     The psychologist Max Wertheimer once wrote a short article called "A Story of Three Days," in which he proposed a simple, and extraordinary definition of freedom. . . . true freedom lies in the ability a person has to react appropriately  to any given circumstance. The perfectly free human is a person who, no matter what she or he encounters, can act appropriately.

P. 375
     Let us consider an architectural example of interference with freedom. Illustrated on this page is a housing project in which the parking lot leads directly to the houses. . . . It creates conditions which make t hard for people to react appropriately to their living experience. There is no common land and therefore no real opportunity for people to experience any sharing or public or common interaction. The desire for this kind of interaction may well e slight. But when it occurs, as a natural impulse, it cannot be satisfied --- indeed it is prevented, frustrated, forces run underground, natural expression of action is modified and curtailed.

Alexander describes the "stress reservoir," a metaphor for understanding human stress and its effect on the human mind. Very simple.

P. 376, "The Stress Reservoir"
     Broadly speaking, the reaction to each unsolved problem, or annoyance, or conflict that is encountered creates in the individual some level of stress. Stress is initially functional and productive. Its purpose is to mobilize the body in such a way that problems get solved. . . . But there is a limited capacity for stress in every human individual. Varying from person to person, it is nevertheless quite finite . . . as the stress reaches the top of the reservoir, the organism's ability to deal effectively with the stress decreases. This then gives rise to the "stress," as used in its popular meaning. . . . When the stress is too great, creative functioning is impaired. . . . stress is cumulative, because it is all in one currency.

[from the notes: see Hans Selye, The Stress of Life]

P. 378
The further the stress reservoir is brought to overflowing, the more people are surrounded by conflicts which make it impossible for them to meet their ordinary striving and aspirations. They struggle, but are undermined continuously by a separation from every reality, and by a separation from the experience of solving problems, overcoming them, and meeting challenges and overcoming them, and becoming, therefore, free.

Alexander is preaching to the choir over here. I'm already on board with this definition of freedom, so I should probably stop basking in agreement. I'll allow myself to indulge in one more quote along this line though.

P. 380
. . . A living environment is one which encourages, allows, each person to react appropriately to what happens, hence to be free, hence to encourage the most fruitful development in each person. This is an environment which goes as far as possible in allowing people's tendencies, their inner forces, to run loose, so that they can take care, by themselves, of their own development. It is an environment in which a person is free to grow, if she wishes to grow, and to do so where, and how, she chooses.

// This assumes something that I also assume, which is stated on an earlier page:

P. 374
One may assume. . . that each person naturally does everything possible, to be alive. The tendency to enjoy life. . . is a natural human force. It is the thing a person most naturally aspires to, and seeks.

P. 380
[A living environment] releases you, allows you to be yourself, allows you to be free. Ease. The yawn, a smile, a perfect ease which allows you, above all, to be yourself. . . This ease, this freedom, depends on configurations which are opposite from the conflict-inducing, stress-inducing configurations I have been describing earlier. Rather it depends in part on "opposite" configurations, those which remove energy-wasting conflict from the environment [and] release human effort for more challenging tasks, for the freedom to be human.
     The 253 configurations in A PATTERN LANGUAGE are of this type. Each pattern . . . describes some conflict --- better said, some system of conflicting forces --- . . . which can be tamed, resolved, when the environment is right.

P. 382
. . . so long as the configuration is wrong, the conflict remains underground. Yet there is no benefit to keeping the conflict under the surface. All that does is add to stress. It does not contribute challenge. It is, in any case, invisible, experienced only in the built-up stress, not as a creative challenge.

P. 392
. . . If the flowers on the trees attract birds, and the singing of the birds then intensifies the beauty of the bench, the birds contribute directly to the wholeness of the bench. The flowers may contribute indirectly, by contributing to the wholeness of the bird-filled trees. Thus the wholeness is a complex living structure: it may be sustained, or not, by countless aspects of the various systems which surround and fill the space where the wholeness occurs.

//

Videogames are a lot. There are none of the material concerns of architecture, but "the various systems which surround and fill the space" are not pre-existing as they are in architecture. I guess level design is in some sense 'architecture for another world of systems'. I love doing this type of work. It's harder when those systems are still in development.

On P. 393 Alexander uses the phrase "the lethal disembodiment of the human being" to describe what is done by inhuman architecture, and an inhuman world, which removes 'real problems' from the realm of humans. That is, in more recent times people are "not suffering from a real problem, more from a lack of engagement, a loss of connection to the earth, to their fellow creatures, even to themselves."

P. 427
. . . life --- an emergent thing in the space itself --- appears as the space wakes up. When something works, or is "functional," its space is awakened to a very high degree. It becomes alive. The space itself becomes alive.
. . . I do know that it simply is so.
     The fundamental functional insight is to realize the mechanistic functional analysis is all a myth anyway --- since there is no stopping in the endless regression of reasons for why something works.

I have not found any simple quote to capture Alexander's idea/argument that 'ornament' and 'function' are inseparable parts. As with Kastrup, I find the appeal to ontology quite extravagant. I have thought of these as lenses, not ontologies. E.g. MDA is a way of thinking about things, not a way to believe things fundamentally are. Perhaps this very approach to ontology is bound up in the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint? What is the meaning of 'ontology' itself, under the mental world model, or the world composed entirely of centers? I'll have to revisit this idea.

Here Alexander moves on from the unity of ornament/function to an argument which I find more compelling - the unity of space/function, which I believe comes close to the nature of patterns, which are the unity of problem/solution. As a lens, and bearing in mind that lenses are in some senses temporary ontologies, it is useful to perceive the entire system (the object and its living usefulness) as a whole, rather than dissected necessarily into the physical and the conceptual parts.

P. 428
We do not have function on the one hand, and space or geometry on the other hand. We have a single thing --- living space --- which has its life to varying degrees.

 There is a wonderful idea earlier that I failed to quote-capture, that artisans often produce good work by following intuitions which Alexander says follow his properties, his idea of life. I am inclined to agree... is it strange that I'm beginning to believe that strong centers are a great metaphor that following produces better physical work? I expect a nontrivial portion of this is that we do better work when we do work that appeals to our natural pattern recognition. Work that suits our brains. Human work.

P. 431
1. Each center gets its life, always, from the fact that it is helping to support and enliven some larger center.
2. The center becomes precious because of it.

Teleology and the mechanistic viewpoint, or top-down VS. bottom-up.

Why is anything? Why does a flower grow?

The mechanistic viewpoint says that a flower grows because of what is smaller than it, interpreting the question as a prompt to explain . . . the mechanisms at play. What causes the flower to grow?

This other viewpoint says that a flower grows because of what is larger than it, interpreting the question as one of purpose, of teleology . . . the systems which the flower serves and which serve it. For what reason does the flower grow?

The simple question, "Why?" is ambiguous between these two cases. This ambiguity is something.

Why is the sky blue?

[pingback: http://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=389.0]

I've arrived at the end of book one. I think I'll make a new thread for book two--I've already got a hold on it at the library.

P.442
. . . the last hundred years in architecture . . . lack . . . a coherent basis which is rooted in common sense, in observation, and which is congruent with human feeling.
. . . modernism, postmodernism, organic architecture, the architecture of the poor, architecture of high technology, critical regionalism --- the different positions [taken by modern architecture] --- have been discussed much as one might discuss the latest clothing fashions [and "not, on the whole, been pursued by experiment, or logical reasoning"].
. . . in the intellectual atmosphere of pluralism, celebrated in the 20th century, it has been easy to say what one believes, but nearly impossible to say what is good or true.

P.442
     I am proposing a new basis, . . . based on what most people experience as true or real --- it is rooted in observation.
. . . a core of judgement must be found which appeals to the deepest instincts in everyone, . . .

P.443
I have tried to suggest --- to prove --- that life is a phenomenon which is more profound than a self-reproducing machine, that it attaches to the very substance of space itself. . . .
I have suggested that living structure lies at the core of all life. This living structure is in the very mathematics of space. . . .
We may say that, for the sake of our own welfare, the world must be made so that it contains, and is built from, living structure.

P.444
. . .This is not merely a poetic way of talking. It is a new physical conception of how the world is made and how it must be understood.

The Nature of Order presents more useful information than The Idea of the World (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=380.0) and more beautifully, so it is unfortunate that I find myself comparing the two, but the conception of the material of the universe, and the dedication to proving it according to science, is present in both.

It tugs at my mind: Alexander's idea that "living structure is in the very mathematics of space" and Kastrup's that the universe's essence is (literally) one experiencing mind are so similar in their overreach. Both make arguments based on, as Alexander put it at the end of book one, "based on what most people experience as true or real". Kastrup suggests that the only thing we can possibly know for sure is our experience, not the things we experience, but that we experience at all. Alexander roots his perspective in human feeling.

When Alexander writes that "for the sake of our welfare, the world must be made so that it contains, and is built from, living structure", I feel that so deeply in my bones, in my heart. He belies his own motivation whether he knows it or not; he literally says that we must "make" the world contain, we must "make" the world built from, "living structure," "for the sake of our welfare".

My belief is that as humans we are capable of processing information and abstract concepts, but that ideas can hurt us. There are a lot of ideas about how the world works, and about what the world is. These ideas can be both very true and very hurtful. Some of the most true ideas we have are not going to be beautiful, but painful, damaging. The only exception is if we do in fact live in a Ptolemaic paradise after all, where the truest ideas coincide with our most positive emotions. It is my strongly-held belief that we do not.

It seems to me that Alexander, although he is also very interested in discovering truth, wants too much to produce a truth. He writes, and I believe him, that it is "for the sake of our own welfare". His words are meant to communicate that for our own good we must be sure to build a world that suits us, suits our human feelings. His words also tell me that he has constructed a worldview upon this foundation and not upon truth. I agree with him completely. I agree with him so much that it hurts. But knowing this I cannot borrow his worldview; I cannot hold a worldview built upon such a noticeably shaky foundation.

I can only borrow parts of his wisdom. Thank you, Christopher Alexander.

End of book one.

Book two. (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=391)

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