The Nature of Order // Book Four // The Luminous Ground

[droqen]

Regarding Christopher Alexander's
"The Nature of Order"
(Book 4, The Luminous Ground)

[droqen]

P8

. . . it is in the nature of matter, that it is soaked through with self or "I." . . . the thing we call "the self," which lies at the core of our experience, is a real thing, existing in all matter, beyond ourselves, . . . this is the nature of matter.

---

~ The Idea of the World, idealism in general

[droqen]

On page 18 Alexander describes how spiritual, religious, ethical belief systems are not enough to resolve the rift... Whitehead's rift (described on an earlier page) between our picture of how the world works, "the mechanical-material picture of the world (which we accept as true)", and our belief in some immaterial thing, "our intuitions about self and spirit (which are intuitively clear but scientifically vague)"

[droqen]

P19

beyond-mechanistic or ultra-mechanistic assumptions . . . control much of what we say and think and do . . . These ultra-mechanistic assumptions about matter -- not strictly justified by mechanistic science itself, but inspired by it and encouraged by it -- have shaped our attitude to art and architecture and society and environment. . . .

TACIT ASSUMPTION 1*.    What is true, is only
the body of those facts which can be represented as
lifeless mechanisms.

{ * this is 1 of the 10 tacit assumptions 'inspired and encouraged' by mechanistic science, by the 'ultra-mechanistic', described by Christopher Alexander }

[droqen]

I am thinking of Pay attention to what is important, not just quantifiable. There must be significantly more writing on how e,g, the scientific process as we know it biases all ideas about truth in the world towards that which is quantifiable(?) by the scientific process.

In Alexander's statement he is suggesting that the mechanistic worldview is introducing, or rather has introduced, deeply-rooted biases that the only things which are true are those things which can be measured, proven, quantified.

Our tools are not sufficient, however, to quantify everything that is important. Perhaps they never will be. But the common world-picture may be built on a foundation of reliable knowing. This is what Alexander is attempting to oppose in his book.

[droqen]

This fourth book is crucial, omg. Book 1 says that we are going to have a 'scientific theory' (paraphrasing) of Alexander's 'life'; Book 4 is now beginning to answer why, or maybe he has always been answering it and I am now seeing why.

The builders of Florence, especially those building from about the year 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D., lived and worked with an unshakable belief in God. . . . For them, every stone was a gift to that unshakable belief in God they shared. It is the belief, the unshakable nature of the belief, its authenticity, and above all its solidity, which made it work effectively for them. We, in our time, need an authentic belief, a certainty, connected with the ultimate reaches of space and time --- which does the same for us. // The living character of their stones came directly from their belief.

Alexander reiterates many times that he is not anti-physics, or anti-science, or anti-logic, and states explicitly many times that these things are 'too beautiful' to reject. He is looking to take two separate truths and create, from them, a unified whole. The first truth is all that we have discovered about how the world works, from the perspective of our "20th-century mechanistic viewpoint". The second truth is what it is to feel human, to feel the living nature of things, to feel. He is unwilling to reject either, but also unwilling to accept the separation.

This is amazing.

[droqen]

. . . it is not realistic to imagine that the belief which they had, and which inspired them and led them on and then release them to make these marvelous works, could, in the same form, be ours again. That era has passed. // Somehow, our own version of this relatedness between man and the universe. . . must be . . . rooted in truths consistent with the 21st century. If there is to be such a thing in the future, it must -- if we ever reach it -- be a transformed version, perhaps a vision of something like God, a future vision of the universe that arises from our time, consistent with our biology and physics, that makes sense for us of our world, that can inspire us in a way that is connected with our own state of 21st-century evolution.

[droqen]

. . . to create living structure, we need a vision of the universe in which meaning exists, in which a vision of relatedness and self have a primary place. But it must be a vision whose feelings, whose depth of understanding, is as real for us -- true and vibrant and real as part of daily life in the third millennium -- as much as God was at home in Mozart's heart. . . . According to this argument, if we wish to create a living world, finding our own contemporary version of the I. . . is a challenge we must meet. . . . the deepest living structure in buildings is not attainable without some . . . new faith based on a new physical and intellectual grasp of the nature of the material universe. For us, . . . the old forms of mysticism that we know as religious cannot provide us with this "something." It is too late. By the end of the 19th century, unshakable faith in God -- as human beings had known it in the world's religions for some two thousand years -- no longer worked. For us of the 20th and 21st centuries, our faith, if there is to be faith, our deep understanding, must come from some new vision -- a new vision able to do for us and for the future what the vision of God did for the builders of the 14th century.

[droqen]

End of chapter two.

[droqen]

p58

. . . I am proposing [it] is literally true [that] . . . the relation between a person, and the living structure in the world, is an actual and tangible relationship of a kind that we have not yet grasped. . . . we and it . . . are not separate, cannot be separate, are two halves of a single whole.

As always here in close reading, Alexander is losing me, but I understand his perspective. He, too attached to his own idea of mechanistic science, is struggling to map this 'surreal' thing he strongly knows to be important and true, while his notion of what is important and true is bound up in the mechanistic-science construction of reality.

What does it mean for something to be real?

I suppose I believe that Alexander, were he alive today, would find it difficult to accept that a non-quantifiable thing, an immeasurable thing, can be widely accepted as true and important. Maybe that is exactly what he is fighting, even if he couldn't see it, or overcome it within himself. Maybe.

Two things may have no physical connection, yet share properties and behaviours, have a relationship, come together or move apart. There is something here. I think the best way to describe the mindset I'd like to be in is 'relaxed about truth and reality.' It's easy for me to get all wrapped up in the definition of a word, for example, but much better when I step away unworried from the precise form of it and focus on... the feeling.

[droqen]

Now, it's not that I think it's not real, either. But the word has begun to take on the flavour of meaninglessness. Perhaps I am the one too attached to what it means for something to be real?

In any case, I relinquish opinions about the meaning of 'real' and will allow myself to be carried on without it.

[droqen]

Perhaps I'm one step closer towards Agnes Martin when she said, "I used to meditate until I stopped thinking. . . . I don't have any ideas myself, and I don't believe anybody else's, so that leaves me a clear mind. . . . Gosh, yes, I'm an empty mind, so when something comes into it, you can see it!"

I'd like to have a clear mind.

[droqen]

I was reading page 59 over a breakfast of defrosted grocery store lasagna when I realized I still think Christopher Alexander is too focused on reality, on arguing for reality, on proving that what he's talking about is real. It's hard for me to describe exactly the ouroboros in which he finds himself, but it goes something like...

1. People want to describe things in terms of machines which can be made perfectly understandable and logical and rational and dead

2. The way that people generally feel about things is very important

3. These two truths or perspectives cannot be integrated, as we cannot describe how feelings work in a way that captures the value of actually feeling

4. The solution is to create a new worldview in which feeling is not mere feeling, but a sophisticated tool of measurement of some force or energy which 'really exists'

I think that I diverge from him in the 4th. We're so, so close, but I can feel a gap, something yet unrealized, and he knew it was not yet realized when he wrote this book, these books. What am I even trying to say?

[droqen]

i like art because, unconcerned with truth, it makes me comfortable being, myself, unconcerned with truth. reality comes in the front door like the cold air in winter and we all say "Close it! Close the door!" and you close the door and nobody asks whether we ought to let it in, unless they're too warm, then we might let it in for their sake. being able to write code, to manipulate the machines that wield truth like a weapon, is like having too many windows, loose doors, portholes, cracks in the walls, big panes of glass:

it's bad for insulation.

[droqen]

Despite Alexander's insistence to the opposite, I'd really like to read The Luminous Ground as poetry, and not science, not because I want to shield my 20th century mechanistic viewpoint from his strange accusations upon reality, but the opposite: I want to shield the grand idea which he presents from my 20th century mechanistic viewpoint's tacit assumptions.

from Interview with Agnes Martin:

I don't [believe? read?] what the intellectuals put out. The intellectuals, they, they discover one fact and another fact and another fact, and they say, from all these facts, we can deduce so-and-so. *shakes head* Not good. That's just a bad guess! Nothing of it could come but inaccuracy. Never will we learn the truth about life.

So I had a hard time giving up some of them. But I've managed to... evolution. I gave up the idea of evolution. All of them. I gave up all of the theories. Even the atomic theory. And then I don't have any ideas myself, and I don't believe anybody else's, so that leaves me a clear mind. *laughs*