gglP'ifv/

The four books of The Nature ofOrder constitute theninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth in aseriesofbookswhich describe an entirely newattitude to architecture and building.The booksare intended to provide acomplete working alternative to ourpresent ideas about architecture, building,andplanning — analternative which will,wehope, gradually replace current ideas andpractices.

Volume I THE TIMELESS WAY OF BUILDING

Volume 2 A PATTERN LANGUAGE

Volume J THE OREGON EXPERIMENT

Volume 4 THE LINZ CAFE

Volumes THE production of houses

Volume 6 a new theory of urban design

Volume-/ a foreshadowing of 2ist century art:THE COLOR AND GEOMETRY OF VERY EARLY TURKISH CARPETS

Volume 8 THE MARY ROSE MUSEUM

Volumes p to 12

THE NATURE OF ORDER: AN ESSAY ON THE ART OF BUILDING

AND THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

Book I THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE

Book 2 THE PROCESS OF CREATING LIFE

Book J A VISION OF A LIVING WORLD

Book 4 THE LUMINOUS GROUND

Future volume now in preparation

Volume ij battle: the story of a historic clashBETWEEN WORLD SYSTEM A AND WORLD SYSTEM B

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

Hand painted tile, black glaze, white slip

THE

NATUREOF

ORDERAn Essay on the Art ofBuilding and

the Nature ofthe Universe

BOOK ONE

THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE

BOOK TWO

THE PROCESS OF CREATING LIFE

BOOK THREE

A VISION OF A LIVING WORLD

BOOK FOUR

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

THE CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURE

BERKELEY CALIFORNIA

in association with

PATTERNLANGUAGE.COM

© 2004 CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER

PREVIOUS VERSIONS

© 1980, I983, I987, I993, I995, I996,1998, I999, 2000, 200I, 2002, 2003CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER

Published byThe Center for Environmental Structure2701 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708

CES is a trademark of the Center for Environmental Structure.

Allrights reserved. Nopartofthispublication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form orbyany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise,without the prior permission of the Center for EnvironmentalStructure.

isbn 978-0-9726529-4-0 (Book4)isbn 978-0-9726529-0-2 (Set)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Alexander, Christopher. The Nature ofOrder: AnEssay ontheArtofBuilding andtheNature of theUniverse/Christopher Alexander, p. cm. (CenterforEnvironmental StructureSeries; v. 12).

Contents: v.i. ThePhenomenon ofLife — v.2. TheProcess ofCreating Lifev.3. A Vision of a Living World — v.4. The Luminous Ground

1. Architecture—Philosophy. 2. Science—Philosophy. 3.Cosmology4.Geometry inArchitecture. 5. Architecture—Case studies. 6.Community

7.Process philosophy. 8.Color (Philosophy).I. Center for Environmental Structure. II. Title.

III. Title: The Luminous Ground.

IV. Series: Center for Environmental Structure series ; v. 12.

NA2500 .A444 2°°2

72o'.i—dc2i 2002154265

isbn978-0-9726529-4-0 (cloth: alk.paper: v.4)

Typographyby Katalin Bendeand Richard Wilson

Manufactured in ChinabyEverbest PrintingCo., Ltd.

BOOK ONE

THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE

PROLOGUE TO BOOKS I"4

THE ART OF BUILDING AND THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE I

PREFACE 5

PART ONE

1. THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE 27

2. DEGREES OF LIFE 63

3. WHOLENESS AND THE THEORY OF CENTERS 79

4. HOW LIFE COMES FROM WHOLENESS IO9

5. FIFTEEN FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES 143

6. THE FIFTEEN PROPERTIES IN NATURE 243

PART TWO

7. THE PERSONAL NATURE OF ORDER 299

8. THE MIRROR OF THE SELF 313

9. BEYOND DESCARTES: A NEW FORM OF SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION . . 351

10. THE IMPACT OF LIVING STRUCTURE ON HUMAN LIFE 37I

11. THE AWAKENING OF SPACE 4°3

CONCLUSION 441

APPENDICES:

MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS OF WHOLENESS AND LIVING STRUCTURE . . 445

Vll

BOOK TWO

THE PROCESS OF CREATING LIFE

PREFACE: ON PROCESS I

PART ONE: STRUCTURE-PRESERVING TRANSFORMATIONS

1. THE PRINCIPLE OF UNFOLDING WHOLENESS 15

2. STRUCTURE-PRESERVING TRANSFORMATIONS 51

3. STRUCTURE-PRESERVING TRANSFORMATIONS IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETY 85

4. STRUCTURE-DESTROYING TRANSFORMATIONS IN MODERN SOCIETY . 107

INTERLUDE

5. LIVING PROCESS IN THE MODERN ERA: TWENTIETH-CENTURY CASES

WHERE LIVING PROCESS DID OCCUR 137

PART TWO: LIVING PROCESSES

6. GENERATED STRUCTURE 1757. A FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENTIATING PROCESS 203

8. STEP-BY-STEP ADAPTATION 2299. EACH STEP IS ALWAYS HELPING TO ENHANCE THE WHOLE .... 249

10. ALWAYS MAKING LIVING CENTERS 267

11. THE SEQUENCE OF UNFOLDING 299

12. EVERY PART UNIQUE 323

13. PATTERNS: GENERIC RULES FOR MAKING CENTERS 341

14. DEEP FEELING 369

15. EMERGENCE OF FORMAL GEOMETRY 401

16. FORM LANGUAGE AND STYLE 43117. SIMPLICITY 461

PART THREE: A NEW PARADIGM FOR PROCESS IN SOCIETY

18. ENCOURAGING FREEDOM 49519. MASSIVE PROCESS DIFFICULTIES 511

20. THE SPREAD OF LIVING PROCESSES THROUGHOUT SOCIETY:

MAKING THE SHIFT TO THE NEW PARADIGM 531

21. THE ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM ... 551

CONCLUSION fie

appendix: A SMALL EXAMPLE OF A LIVING PROCESS 571

BOOK THREE

A VISION OF A LIVING WORLD

PREFACE: LIVING PROCESSES REPEATED TEN MILLION TIMES I

PART ONE

1. OUR BELONGING TO THE WORLD: PART ONE 25

2. OUR BELONGING TO THE WORLD: PART TWO 41

PART TWO

3. THE HULLS OF PUBLIC SPACE 69

4. LARGE PUBLIC BUILDINGS IOI

5. THE POSITIVE PATTERN OF SPACE AND VOLUME

IN THREE DIMENSIONS ON THE LAND 153

6. POSITIVE SPACE IN ENGINEERING STRUCTURE AND GEOMETRY . . . 191

7. THE CHARACTER OF GARDENS 229

PART THREE

8. PEOPLE FORMING A COLLECTIVE VISION FOR THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD . 257

9. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AN URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD 283

10. HIGH DENSITY HOUSING 311

11. NECESSARY FURTHER DYNAMICS OF ANY NEIGHBORHOOD

WHICH COMES TO LIFE 333

PART FOUR

12. THE UNIQUENESS OF PEOPLE'S INDIVIDUAL WORLDS 361

13. THE CHARACTER OF ROOMS 411

PART FIVE

14. CONSTRUCTION ELEMENTS AS LIVING CENTERS 447

15. ALL BUILDING AS MAKING 4^116. CONTINUOUS INVENTION OF NEW MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES . . 517

17. PRODUCTION OF GIANT PROJECTS 561

PART SIX

18. ORNAMENT AS A PART OF ALL UNFOLDING 579

19. COLOR WHICH UNFOLDS FROM THE CONFIGURATION 615

THE MORPHOLOGY OF LIVING ARCHITECTURE: ARCHETYPAL FORM. . . 639

CONCLUSION: THE WORLD CREATED AND TRANSFORMED 675

APPENDIX ON NUMBER 683

BOOK FOUR

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

PREFACE: TOWARDS A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE OF MATTER

PART ONE

1. OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 9

2. CLUES FROM THE HISTORY OF ART 29

3. THE EXISTENCE OF AN "i" 494. THE TEN THOUSAND BEINGS 73

5. THE PRACTICAL MATTER OF FORGING A LIVING CENTER Ill

MID-BOOK APPENDIX: RECAPITULATION OF THE ARGUMENT 135

PART TWO

6. THE BLAZING ONE I43

7. COLOR AND INNER LIGHT 157

8. THE GOAL OF TEARS 241

9. MAKING WHOLENESS HEALS THE MAKER 261

10. PLEASING YOURSELF 271

11. THE FACE OF GOD 3OI

CONCLUSION TO THE FOUR BOOKS

A MODIFIED PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 317EPILOGUE: EMPIRICAL CERTAINTY AND ENDURING DOUBT 339

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 345

i dedicate these four books to my family:

to my beloved mother, who died many years ago;

to my dear father, who has always helped me and inspired me;

to my darlings llly and sophie;

and to my dear wife pamela who gave them to me,

and who shares them with me.

These books are a summary of what i have understood about

the world in the sixty-third year of my life.

THE

LUMINOUS

GROUND

* * * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This fourth book presents an aspect ofphysicalreality that is often hidden nowadays — at leastin the West— althoughit wasverymuchpart ofhumankind's conception of the world in pasttimes.There are phenomenain the universe thatareexplainable onlybymeansof specific models,or approaches, and not by anyother means. Nature has manydifferent aspectsand is not a singlereality; at least the human mind cannot comprehend everything at once using a single model.

I have tried, in the first three books of the

nature of order, to give a complete overviewof the phenomenon of life in architecture, togetherwith the issue of value, which is inseparable from life. This has included a description, inBook i, of the static character of living structure,and a view, in Books 2 and 3, of the living processes which can, successfully, generate livingstructure. These living phenomena are, I haveargued, commonly observable: we see and feelthem when they are present in the structure ofthe world. But they are not easyto explain, andabove all, they cannot be explained within theworld picture of conventional 19th-century mechanics. Nor, as far as I know, can they be explained in the world view of biology, complexsystems theory, and quantum physics asweknowthem at the end of the 20th century.

These phenomena do not fitwithin anyprevious explanatory context.They need their ownmodel.

An analogy may be drawn with quantummechanics.As a theoretical discipline,when firstformulated, it stood apart from other fields ofphysics, and even today there are still questionsand inconsistencies internally. Nevertheless, thetheoretical framework of quantum mechanicshelps explain certain aspects of physical reality.We can see the interference fringes of electrons,observethe photoelectric effect,calculate the radiative dissipation of a blackhole, test Bell's pre

diction, and measure Josephson tunnelingthrough a barrier,and those phenomena are simplynot explainable in the contextofclassical mechanics. Whether a person has philosophicalreservations about the basis of quantum mechanics or not, it remains true that it is useful,

and that no other formalism available when it

was first formulated, or now, does an equallygood job explaining what has to be explained, ina certain range of phenomena.

In the sameway, I haveattempted to put together a workable explanation of the physicaland emotional phenomena which I have observed in buildings and in the livingworld. Theexplanation, not surprisingly, clashes with otherexplanations of physical phenomenawhich havebeenstudiedin physics. Nevertheless, I have verylittle choice: what I am putting forward in thesefour books of the nature of order is — for

the present —the onlytheoretical explanation Ican construct (until a better one comesalong) tohelp us understand what I have described. Notonly do we want to understand this set of phenomena, but we must also be able to reproducethem: we want to be able to create living structure in the world. Quantum mechanics would

not have been of more than academic interest to

a few university professors if it were not for itsimmense field of practical applications, such asin electronics. Here, too, in the sphereof building, we have a practical aim. We wish to createliving structure in the built world; we wish toapply this model of the universe in order to reproduce the phenomena that we are interestedin.

The explanation that I give is not complete,and it ismyhopethat it will be improved byothers in years to come. Nevertheless, some understanding of these phenomena is necessary at thisearly stageso that we can use them to better ourunderstanding of the universe.

Is what I propose real? Well, the phenom- the observed phenomena. A reader who rejectsenaareobservable, and the results are reproduc- some aspects of my explanation in Book 4 asible (when we create an artifact or building too unlikely, should keep in mind that this isthat has the proposed qualities), so this part but an attempt to explain certain observedat least corresponds to reality. The theoretical phenomena. It helps us to understand a particu-explanation is simplyan attempt to consolidate lar aspect of physical reality.

PREFACE

TOWARDS A NEW CONCEPTION OF

THE NATURE OF MATTER

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

1 / INTRODUCTION

In Book 4 we come to the most personal aspectof the nature of order: the wayin which architecture— indeed, all order in the world —

touches the inner human person, our being.The structure of life I have described in

buildings — the structure which I believe to beobjective —isdeeply and inextricably connectedwith the human person and with the innermostnature of human feeling. In this fourth book Ishallapproach this topicof the inner feeling in abuilding as if there is a kind of personal thickness— a source, or ground, something almostoccult — in which we find that the ultimate

questions of architecture and art sometimes

touchsomeconnection of incalculable depth between the madework (building,painting, ornament, street) and the inner "I" which each of us

experiences.What I call "the I" is that interior element

in a work of art, or in a work of nature, which

makes onefeelrelatedto it. It mayoccurin aleaf,or in a picture, in a house, in a wave, even in agrainof sand, or in an ornament. It is not ego. Itis not me. It is not individualat all, havingto dowith me, or you. It is humble, and enormous:that thing in commonwhich each one of us hasin us. It is the spiritwhich animates eachlivingcenter.

2/BACKGROUND

In Book i, the phenomenon of life, I havegivenan accountof the livingstructure which exists in all those buildings and artifactswhichhavelife, which support life, which are themselvesalive. InBook2,the process of creating life,

I have given an accountof livingprocesses — theclass ofprocesseswhichareneeded tocreate livingstructure— leadingto a newviewof the dynamicsof architecture. In Book3, a vision of a living world, with hundreds ofillustrations, I have

given examples of modern towns, buildings,neighborhoods, gardens, columns, and rooms,which have, to someextent, this livingstructurein them, and which have been generated, ingreateror lesserdegree, bylivingprocess.

But in the pages of Books i, 2, and 3,1 haveso far only hinted at what is possibly the mostimportant thing of all. I have not yet describedin the most direct terms, the innermostprocessthat lies behind these phenomena.

That is because the real heart of the matter

is somethingwhich is not so easilytalked about,

something nearly embarrassing, whichwewouldperhaps not feel entirely comfortableto blurt outtoo easily, even to mention.

I canintroduce itbestbytalkingbrieflyaboutmyprivate experience makingbuildings. When Iampartofthemaking ofabuilding andexaminemyprocess, what is happening in me when I doit, myself, in my effort, is that I find that I amnearly always reaching for the same thing. Insome form, it is the personal natureof existence,revealed in the building, that I am searching for.It is"I,"theI-myself, lyingwithinall things. It isthat shining something which draws me on,which I feel in the bones of the world, whichcomes out of the earth and makes our existence

luminous.

This perhaps enigmatic statement about mydaily life is not meant to be provocative. Nor isit meant to be profound. It is just a fact for methatwhen push comes to shove, on a day-to-daybasis in my work as an architect, this is how Ithink about things. I ask myself constantly—

PREFACE

and it is the only question I really ask of myself—What mustI do to put thisself-like quality into the house, the room, the roof, the path,the tile?

Often, I can feel the possibilityof this in athing before I start to make it or before I start tothink, or design, or plan, or build, or before Istart to paint. It is the sublimeinterior, the rightthing. I first feel existence shimmering in reality, and I then feel it deep enough in the thing Iam lookingat and trying to make, to know thatit is worth capturing in concrete and wood andtile and paint. I can feel it, nearly always, almost before I start. Or, rather, I do not usuallylet myselfstart until I can feel this thing.

This thing, this something, is not God, itis not nature, it is not feeling. It is someultimate,beyond experience. When I reach for it, I try tofind —I can partly feel — the illumination ofexistence, a glimpse of that ultimate. It is alwaysthe same thing at root. Yet, of course, it takesan infinite variety of different forms.

Although in Books 1-3I have onlytouchedupon this ultimate indirectly, I must now dwellon it as all-important. It is unavoidable, thisthing, and it isthecore ofallliving structure. Ifwe trulyhope to make buildings that have life,

then it is this thing that we must look for, andmeet, and face. But in the earlier three books I

have not expressed strongly enough, thisglimpse of the ultimate as the driving force behind what must be done. In the earlier books, in

order to place attention on the questions of living structure, I wanted to speak in a waywhichwas, as far as possible, consistentwith our current way of thinking about science and aboutarchitecture. I wanted, as far as possible, topresent a structure which could be understoodin conventional terms. As a result, most ofwhat

Books 1-3 contain is consistent, structurally,with what we presently believe about the universe. But underneath that, implied, there is apart which is not consistent with the way wepresendy think about the universe. Perhaps, inpart, I have been reluctant to make it clearenough because it rests on academically unmentionable foundations.

But now, in this fourth book, I must finallyadmit that beyond the formal structure this iswhatI experience. No matterhowdifficult it istowrite down and make it believable, it — this — is

what I believe all of us can experience. It is vastand impersonal. Yet it is personal, relating toevery person.

3 / THE PERSONAL

When I set out to make the small black and

white terrazzo ornaments on the last step of thestairs to my basement office on Shasta Road inBerkeley (illustrated onpage 4), inpartI reachedthis state. I knew that I wasgrazing, just touching, existence itself. I could feel this thing, hovering, shimmering, in thework. I knew that thepearly substance, being created bythis pattern ofblack and white bits of marble dust and cement,

does set things in order in such away asto revealexistence,to make us seeit, to see it shining, justbeyondour grasp.

Book 4 has to do with this inner meaning,with the task of making and reaching this

shining "something." I want to describe it sothat we can talk about it, understand what it

means, share it as an aspiration, recognize itas something true, and have some inkling ofwhat it is.

Myhypothesis isthis: thatallvalue dependson a structure in which each center, the life of

each center, approaches this simple, forgotten,remembered, unremembered "I" ... that in theliving work each center, in some degree, is aconnection to this "I," or self... that the livingsteel and concrete bridge is one in which eachpart is connected to this self, awakens it in us... that the living song is one in which each

T 11 E L U M1NOUS G ROUND

Black and white marble-terrazio inlay in a concrete step, Christopher Alexander, Berkelev, 1974.

phrase, each note, isconnected to this self,awakens it in us, reminds us of ourselves . .. that the

living picture is one in which every center hasthis selfand, thus, because it was painted there,it reminds us ofourselves . .. and that the livingbuilding is one in which each window, each roof,each room, each ceiling, each doorway, the gardens, the flowerbed, the trees, the ramblingbramblebushes, the wall by the stream, the seat,and the handle on the door, are all connected tothis I, and awaken it in us.

I believe that the ultimate effort ofall serious

art is to make things which connect with this Iofevery person. This "I," notnormally available,is dredged up, forced to the light, forced intothe light of day, by the work of art.

In this, the work of art is similar to nature,because in nature too, this "I" is what we find.The rock, the ripple in the pond, and the fishdarting along the stream are connected to thisI, reverberate with I, awaken and enliven us,continually refresh the I which sleeps in us. Andthis I which sleeps in uswill not then follow theremembered voice. For this I which comes to

life, as we gaze upon the pond, the buttercup,the cloud floating in the purple sky, the rushof water in the thunderstorm — this self is first

awakened and then speaks to us, encouragingthe I in us to be itself, in a new form taken within

us, not similar but awakened in its newness, andspeaking, itself, in a voice which will Awaken Iin other selves.

P R E F A C E

4 / THAT EXISTS IN ME, AND BEFORE ME,AND AFTER ME

Effectively, what all this amounts to is that intheprocess ofmaking thingsthrough living process, gradually I approach moreand morecloselyknowledge of what is truly in myown heart.

Early in mylife as an architect, at first I wasconfused or deceived by the teaching I receivedfrom architectural instructors. I thought thatthose things which are important — and perhaps the things which I aspired to make— were"other," outside myself, governed by a canon ofexpertise which lay outside me, but to which Igave due.

Gradually, the olderI got, I recognized thatlittle of that had value,and that the thing whichdid have true value wasonlythat thing which layin my own heart. Then I learned to value onlythat which truly activates what is in my heart. Icame to value those experiences which activatemyheart as it really is. I sought, more and more,only those experiences which have the capacity,the depth, to activate the feeling that is myrealfeeling, in mytruechildish heart.AndI learned,slowly, to make thingswhich are of that nature.

This was a strange process, like cominghome. As a young man I started with all myfancy ideas, the ideas andwonderful concepts oflateboyhood, early manhood, mystudentyears,the ideas I wondered at, open-mouthed, thingswhich seemed so great to me. Then, from myteachers I learned things even morefantastic —I learned sophisticated taste, cleverness, profundity, seriousness. I tried to make, with my ownhands, things of that level of accomplishment.That took me to middle age.

Then, gradually, I beganto recognize that inthe midst of that cleverness, which I never trulyunderstood anyway, the one thing I could trustwas a small voice, a tiny soft-and-hard vulnerablefeeling, recognizable, whichwas something Iactually knew. Slowly that knowledge grewin me. It was the stuff which I was actually cer

tain of— not because it aped what others hadtaught me, but becauseI knew it to be true of itself, in me.

Usually the things which embodied thisknowledge were very small things, things sosmallthat in ordinary discourse they might haveseemed insignificant, like the fact that I feltcomfortable when mybacksank into a pillowarranged in a certain way, and the fact that a cup oftea was more comforting, when I lay thus, withmy back in that pillow,staring at the sky.

Then in my later years I gradually began torecognize that this realistic voice, breakingthrough— and whichbynow, I had identifiedinmanyconcrete ways, evento the point of writingthis stuff down so others could recognize it also,forthemselves, in theirway, in their ownhearts —wasmyownvoice, the voice that had always beenin me, sincechildhood, but which as ayoung manI hadpushed away andwhich,now, again, I beganto recognize as the only true value.

But this knowing of myself, and what wasin my own true heart, was not only childish.Because at the same time that I recognized it insmall things— like cups of tea, leaves blowingoff an autumn tree, a pebbleunderfoot — I alsobegan to recognize it in very great things, inworks made byartists centuries away from us intime, thousandsof miles away in space.In something which one of them had made, suddenlythis childish heart, this me, came rushing back.I could feel this, for example, in the mud wallat the back of the sand garden of Ryoan-ji. Icould feel it in an ancient fragment of textile. Icould feel it in the worn stone of a church, laid

fourteen hundred years before. Somehow, I began to realize that the greatest masters of theircraft were those who somehow managed to release, in me, that childish heart which is my truevoice, and with which I am completely comfortable and completely free.

T II E LUMINOUS G R O U N D

Ahmedabad, Ahmad Shah's mosque, interior, 1414

PR EFACE

An Ottoman tile. Here the geometry of circles within circles has beenperfected to the stage where one beginstofeel a real connection with some domain beyond the self: the heart beyond the heart.

Knowing this changed my perspective.What at first seemed like a return to childhood

or a simple increase of the personal, graduallytook on a different character. I begin to realizethat what I come in touch with when I go closerand closer to myself is not just "me." It is something vast, existing outside myself and insidemyself, as if it were a contact with the eternal,something everlasting existing before me, in me,and around me. I recognized, too, that my mostlucid momentsoccurwhen I am sweptup in thisvoid, and fully conscious of it, as if it were ablinding light.

This is what I have felt on the beach on the

north shore of Point Reyes near San Francisco,when the sea comes crashing in with enormousforce, when the water and wind are too loud forme to hear my voice, the waves too strong formeto think of swimming, the force of the waterand the wind, the white foam of the waves, theblackish green moving water, the huge, loudgrinding swells, the beach sand that goes on

forever, the seaweeds strewn on the beach thathave been hurled by a force greater than theyare— as I am, also, when I walk among them.

Yet even though I am next to nothing inthe presence ofall this force, I am free there. Insuch a place, at such a moment, I am crushedto understand myown smallness, and then understand the immensity of what exists. But thisimmensity of what exists —and myconnectionto it— is not only something in my heart. It isa vastness which is outside me and beyond meand inside of me.

Actions and objects increase or decrease myconnection to this vastness, which is in me, and

which is also real. A concrete corridor without

windows and with an endless line of doors is

less likely to awaken it in me thana small appletree in bloom. The brick on my front doorstepmay awaken it, if it is ordinary, soft, like life inits construction.

It is at once enormous in extent and infi

nitely intimate and personal.

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

5 / CHANGES IN OUR IDEA OF MATTER

It is the living structure of buildings whichawakensa connection with this personal feeling.The more that it appears in a building, the moreit awakens this feeling in us. Indeed, we maysay,truly, that a building has life in it to the extentthat it awakens this connection to the personal.Or, in other language,wemaysaythat a buildinghas life in it, to the extent it awakens the connec

tion to the eternal vastness which existed before

me, and around me, and after me.

I believe that this is true, not just a nicewayof talking. As1try to explain it quietly, for all itsgrandeur, and try to make the artist's experiencereal, I hope that you, with me, will also catch init aglimpseof a modified pictureof the universe.For, in my view, there is a core of fact here— apersonal nature in what seems impersonal —that both underpins the nature of architecture in

It would perhaps behelpful for the reader toconsider thisbook asanchored at three points: chapter 1, our PRESENTPICTURE OK THE UNIVERSE, chapter 6, THE BLAZING ONE,and the conclusion, a MODIFIED picture of the uni

its ultimate meaning and will also,one day, forcea revision in our idea of the universe.

I believe it is in the nature of matter, that it

is soaked through with self or "I." The essenceof the argument which I am putting before youthroughout Book 4 is that the thing we call "theself," which lies at the core ofourexperience, isareal thing, existinginallmatter, beyondourselves,and that in theend wemustunderstand it,in orderto make living structurein buildings. Butit isalsomy argument that this is the nature of matter. It

is not only necessary to understand it when wewish to make living structure in buildings. It isalso necessary ifwe wish tograsp ourplace in theuniverse, our relationship to nature.

That argument — that difficult intellectualpath—is the path which lies before us in thisbook.

verse. These three chapters provide the anchors of theargument, and describe the modified picture of realitywhich I propose. Theotherchapters provide details fromthe spheres of architecture and art.

Bowloffruit, oil on panel, Christopher Alexander, 1991

PART ONE

We standface toface with art. Can we make the eternal, simple thing, that belongs utterly to the world, and that preserves, sustains, extends, the beauty ofthe world?

Is this trulypossible? Can it be done, in our world oftrucks, freeways, computers, andprefabricatedfurniture andprefabricated drinks?

Throughout Books i, 2,andj, I havepresenteda variety ofpropositions aboutliving structure. They are results ofobservation. Many of them rely, explicitly,on unusual methods ofobservation. Many are based onfeeling. They are capableofteaching us a new attitude towards the art ofbuilding. They are capable, inprinciple, oftransforming ourphysical worldfor the better.

But, powerfuland effective as these methods are, they are likely to be ignoredor rejected by the reader so long as they are understood within a mechanisticworld-view. Aperson who adheres to classical19th- or20th-century beliefs aboutthe nature ofmatter, will not be able, fully, to accept the revisions in buildingpractice that I haveproposed, because the revisions will remain,for thatperson,too disturbingly inconsistent with thepicture ofthe world. The old world-picturewill constantly gnaw at our attempts tofind a wholesome architecture, disturbour attempts, interfere with them —to such an extent that they cannot be understood orused successfully.

Unless our world-picture itself is changed and replaced by a new picture,more consistent with thefeltreality oflife in buildings and in our surroundings,the idea oflife in buildings itself(even with allits highlypractical revisions inarchitecturalpractice) will not be enough to accomplish change.

10

CHAPTER ONE

OUR PRESENT PICTURE

OF THE UNIVERSE

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

1/COSMOLOGY

I have given indications, throughout these fourbooks, that wecannot forma complete pictureofthe nature of architecture without conceptionsthat deal with life and self. We need, for our

time, a picture which allows us to form a connection, a relatedness with the whole. But the

mechanistic scientificworld picture we have inherited, as it stands is not capable of this.

It ishardlypossible to taketheart ofbuildingseriously, as a profound task, if whatwedo whenwedesignabuildingismerely to aggregate meaningless lumps of matter. Yet that is, within ourpresent world-picture, what we are doing whenwe design, or build.Within the present scientificpicture, ifweask,What it isallfor? theonlyanswer

that comes backis, // isfor nothing. Within thispicture, ifwe ask,What is the point?the onlyscientific answer that comes backis, There isnopoint.

I shall begin, therefore, by examining thegreat strength and beauty of the scientificworld-picture, trying to find a crack where we mayinject some new structure that endows the wholewith meaning. That cannot be done by wipingaway the science and technology wehave gained.They are too beautiful, too powerful. We havelearned too much from them, and gained toomuch. But somehow, the abstract mechanism-

inspiredworld-picture must be modified, transformed, in such away that it becomes somethingthat has meaning for all of us.

2 / THE STRENGTH OF THE PRESENT SCIENTIFIC

WORLD-PICTURE

Letus begin by summarizing the strength ofourpresent scientific world-picture. During the lastthree hundred years we have succeeded in building up an astonishing view of reality. This is apicture in which the parts of the world are to beviewedthrough mathematical modelsor mechanisms. That means, mental models have been

constructed with precise rules of behavior, andwe have managed to make these mental modelsmatch the reality in such a powerful degree thatwe can predict, and manipulate, the behavior oftheworld, almost throughout thefull range ofitsscales and substances.

We are able to control atomic explosions.Airplanes fly. We can create new materials. Wecan understand the chemical behavior of matter.

We have learned to cure diseases bymedicines,and through surgery. We have a level of controlof our physical destiny that would have aston-nished ourancestors in virtually any past period

of human history. We have knowledge of, andcontrol over, the subatomic processes; and haveused them to harness energy, to harness communications. We are able to control oscillations

throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, usingthem for everykind of electronic device, for control and communication. We have also begun, inthe last decades, to attend to the behavior of

highly complex systems, and are now achievingunderstanding of this subject in biology, inweather, in ecology, in genetics.

And for the most profound material questions, too,we are beginning to haveanswers. Wehave models of the origin of the universe andgalaxies. We have models of the origins of life.Wehave models ofthehuman psyche, andofinformation flow and ofcognition.

All in all, we have succeeded in buildingsuccessful models of the matter in the universe

and its behavior, in a way that is wonderful

OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

and powerful. It is a collective achievementof an order incomparable with almost anyprevious human achievement. Our modern

world in all its beauty—and fascinating andwonderful as it is to live in it —depends onthis achievement.

3 /THE WEAKNESS OF THE PRESENT WORLD-PICTURE

And yet, there is something wrong! Althoughthis modernpicture is powerful and remarkable,and mustbe appreciated for its great intellectualbeauty—not merely for its practical effectiveness— still, there is something that does not ex-acdywork. In order to create this effective scientific world-picture we had to use a device: theintellectual device of treating entities in natureasif theywereinert, as if theywerelumpsofgeometric substance, without feeling, withoutlife — in effect, merely mechanical elements ina larger machine.

This mental trick was invented by RogerBacon, Descartes, Newton, and others — and

has been the foundation of our modern under

standing. Even the models of quantum mechanics— they are mathematical mechanisms, to besure, not actual physical mechanisms — workbecause they work like mechanisms. The elements are defined, and the rules of interaction

are defined, and everything then follows whenthis mechanism is let loose.

Yet we human beingsalsohave, in our dailyexperience of the world, something different, animmediate awareness of self. We are conscious.

We are aware of our own selves. We have feel

ings.We experience love. Sometimes we experienceunity.As I have shownin Booki, theseexperiences of selfare profoundly connected withthe existence of life in buildings and in oursurroundings.

Within the era of the mechanical world-

picture, we have been taught to think that the

experience of self is somehow an artifact of theinteraction of matter, a consequence of the playof machines.1 Yet thinking so does not contribute anyunderstanding of the self that we experience each day. The self— in each one of us —continues to exist. It is more palpable, morepresent, in our daily experience than is the worldof mental and mathematical mechanisms. Yet

our present world-picture has no place in it forthis self. The self does not figure in the presentworld-picture as a real thing. Nor does consciousness. Nor does love. Nor does the experience of unity.

There are thus two worlds in our minds.

One is the scientific world which has been pictured througha highlycomplex system of mechanisms. The other is the world we actually experience. These two worlds, so far, have not been

connected in a meaningful fashion. AlfredNorth Whitehead, writing about 1920, was oneof the first philosophers to drawattention to thismodern problem, which hecalled thebifurcationof nature.2 Whitehead believed that we will not

have a proper grasp of the universe and our placein it, until the self which we experience in ourselves, and the machinelike character of matterwe see outside ourselves, can beunited in a singlepicture. I believe this. AndI believe thatwe shallnot have a credible view that shows how human

life and architecture are related until White

head's bifurcation is dissolved.3Indeed, until it isdissolved,we cannot help — at least partially —thinking of ourselves as machines!

13

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

4 / THE NEEDS OF ARCHITECTURE

It is little wonder that the mechanistic view

of man has been accompanied by a kind ofhopelessness and despair. Who wants to live,who can live, when we believe that we are

individually indeed nothing but meaninglessmachines?

Some people seek meaning, and solace fortheir loneliness, in religion. To try and offsetthe meaningless and hopeless picture, withoutmeaning, without purpose, spiritualism has reentered the world with a vengeance. Churchesare growing. Fundamentalist movementsthroughout the worldpunish their followers forany departure from traditional or conservativecanonsofbehavior. Beliefin astrology, visits fromouter space, telepathy, are rife. Movements mixing therapy with spiritualism, beliefin afterlife,belief in the goodness of man, efforts to existwithin somecanon of a religious sort, havecomeback, and groweveryday. These religious movements try, somehow, to shield us from the awfulimport of mechanisticscience. They try to makethe world bearable, by leavening the machineswhich we ourselves are, with the incantations of

prophesy, of goodness, of liberation, of heaven,perhaps too of hell.

But none of this can reallywork. I do notbelieve that religion can improve the situation.Even the most holy, the most serious of thesezen monks, new-age priests, new brethren of thenew churches in Texas, in the Philippines, inJapan,in Africa—what can theyhopeto accomplish? The fundamental root of our troubles, ofour meaninglessness, lies in our viewof the nature of matter. If matter is indeed machinelike,and if then we are indeed ourselves machines —

what good is it to call on spirits, to sing hymnsofpraise, to lookforGod? The devastating truthis that if'the world is made of machinelike matter— and we are ourselves therefore ma

chines—we are then doomedto live, for a veryshort time, in the meaningless and living hell

of Franz Kafka, colored onlyby the banalityofits machinelike poindessness.

// is the nature of matter itself which is atstake. Our despair and hopelessness follow fromthebelief, orcertainty, that matterismachinelikein its nature and that we then, being matter also,are machinelike too.

And architecture, too, where is it? Religioncannot inject meaning into architecture, transform what is banal, geometrically, into something that has life and gains life artistically.Again, it is the nature of matter itself which isat stake. The lumps of passive matter,which wearrange, must somehowbecome meaningful aswe try to make them live. But how is that to bedone, in a universe which is, in large part,mechanical?

Throughout the nature of order I havepresented a varietyof propositions about livingstructure.All thesepropositions are, in onesenseoranother, results ofobservation. I have presentedobservations aboutthe degree of life in things—evenin buildings, evenin concreteand brick andwood — andthesurprisingwaythisvaries. I havepresented comments about the nature ofwholeness in theworld, and itsdependence on centers.I have presented definitions ofgeometric properties, correlatedwith degreeoflife—which seempervasive in buildingsand artifactsand in manyparts of nature.

I have triedto show howto make things, inour time, which are truly beautiful. I have presented conclusions about the impact of humanprocess andprocedural sequence on theevolutionofcoherent livingstructure.I have presented examples — manydetailedexamples — of harmonious process anditsimpactonplanningofbuild-ings, structure of buildings, on the detailedgeometry of buildings and the way a building isconstructedfrom material. I have presented rathersurprising facts aboutthe apparent correlation ofthe mirror of the self test with observed life in

H

OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

thousands of centers. I have presented observations about the way that humanfeeling seems tocorrelate with life in materialsystems.

The ideas I have brought forward — somesolid, some more tentative — are in many waysunlike the ideas that are common in our dailyexperience of science and technology. Many ofthem rely, explicidy, on unusual methods of observation. Many are based on feeling. They arecapable of teachingusa newattitude towards theart of building.They are capable, in principle, oftransforming our physical world for the better.

But I believe these arguments will be ignored— or rejected by the reader as a matter ofpractical necessity— unless the reader also faces,and masters, the changes in world-view whichthese arguments require. A person who adheresto a 19th-or 20th-century beliefabout the natureof matter, will not be able to accept the revisionsin building practice that I propose, because these

revisions would remaintoodisturbingly inconsistent with that person's picture ofthe world.

Unless our world-picture itself \s changedand replaced by another, more consistent withthe felt reality of life in buildings and in oursurroundings — the idea of life in buildings itself, evenwith all its ensuing revisions in architectural practice, will not be enough. The oldworld-picture will constantly gnaw at our attempts to find a wholesomearchitecture, disturbour attempts, interfere with them — to such anextent that they cannot be understood or usedsuccessfully.

That is the reason why I choose, now, inthe fourth of these four books, to go — atlast—directly to the question of cosmology.What is the universe made of? What mighta fully adequate picture of it be like? Whatis the nature of matter? What is its fundamen

tal character?

5 / SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS TO BUILD AN IMPROVEDWORLD-PICTURE

Because ourworld-picture isinadequate, duringthe second half of the 20th century many scientists began a serious attempt to repair the world-picture.4 There was a spate ofserious effort, primarily concentrated on the importance ofwholeness, and ofthe whole. This attitude camefrom a confluence of quantum physics, systemtheory, chaos theory, the theory of complexadaptive systems, biology, genetics, and othersources. It setout to paint a more holistic pictureofthe universe — a picture ofthe universe asanunbroken whole. The picture was widely presented to thepublic, andwidely discussed amongscientists. It was a large effort, made joindy byscientists in manydifferentfields, manyof themphysicsts and biologists. They included, amongothers, Erwin Schrodinger, David Bohm, Francisco Varela, John Bell, Eugene Wigner, RogerPenrose, Ilya Prigogine, Benoit Mandelbrot,

Brian Goodwin, John Holland, Stuart Kauf-mann, Mae-Wan Ho.5As a result of their work,especially during the last decade ofthe 20th century, a new attitudebegan to emerge.

This new attitude began with results inquantum mechanics which showed that anaccurate picture of local particle behavior, cannot be reached merely by looking at the localstructure of physical events; rather, that insome compelling way the behavior of eachlocal event must be considered to be influenced

by the whole. In a few cases there have evenbeen indications that the local events are influ

enced by, or been subject to, behavior andstructure of the universe as a whole, includinginfluences and interactions which propagate

faster than the speed of light.6 The vital thing,anyway, was that behavior of physical systemsis always "behavior of the whole," and cannot

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

be well-understood as a conglomerate of localevents acting by themselves.

In parallel with thesedevelopments, a similar new attitude was developing in biology. In19th-centuryscience and in early 20th-centuryscience there had been insufficient attention to

the coordinating functions of the organism; tothe appearance of complex structure in thecourse of evolution and in the daily workingof ecological systems; to the evolution of wholeecologies and individual organisms. These deficiencies were answered by an attempt to showthat complex systems, systems in which manyvariables interact, have new properties — sometimes called "emergent" properties — that arisemerely because of the organizedcomplexity inherent in the network character of the system,itsvariables, and their interactions. The development of chaos theory, the theory of complexsystems, fractals, the idea of autopoesis in complexsystems, have led to remarkable newresults,which show how unexpected and complex behaviors arise in richly interconnected systems.Theorems have been proved to show how compelling order arises, almost spontaneously, inthese systems.7

Thus biology, ecology, the emerging fieldsof complex systems theory, and physics, have allbegun topointtheway towards a new conceptionof the world in which the local system is influenced by, and compelled by, the behavior ofthe whole.

Some science writers have claimed that these

developments heralda future newworldvision inwhich humanity, and wonder, and self, are included. FritjofCapra, inthe tao of physics,wasoneofthe first toexpress thispointofview.8 Morerecently, referring to the tradition of late-20th-century science, the ecologist Stuart Cowanwrote me a letter, in which he said: "There is, inbothscience and theology, a long andimportanttradition of seeing consciousness, spirit, wholeness, and life immanent in the world of space-time,ofmatterand energy, ofthe structureoftheuniverse itself. It is a view ofembodiment and in

carnation, in which even a hydrogen atomhasa

16

profound andmysterious inferiority (Teilhard deChardin's phrase), in which self-organizingstructures cohere and communicate, in which in

terdependence emerges fromafifteen billionyearshared story at all levels of scale, in which profound lifeshimmers forth from the veryfabric ofthe universe . . ."9

This is optimisticand positive. And indeed,the newly propagated wisdom seems to suggestthat the world-picture has been so profoundlyreformulatedby these newevents in science,thatit is a wholly new picture in which even the oldaspirations of religion are encompassed.

It is certainly true that within these new scientific writings, one encounters passages ofbeautyandinspiring thought. Forexample, Mae-Wan Ho writes ofthe activity within the organism,"Whatonemustimagineisan incrediblehiveof activity at every level of magnification —ofmusic beingmadeusingmorethan two thirds ofthe 73 octaves of the electromagnetic spectrum —locally appearing asthough chaotic, andyetperfectly coordinated as awhole. Thisexquisite music is played in endless variations subjecttoourchanges ofmood andphysiology, each organism andspecies withitsown repertoire. . ,"10

The passage is humane and beautiful. Yeteven such passages, when examined closely, remain mechanistic in their detail. Theydeal withthewhole andtheydescribe wondrous behavior inthe movement of the whole; the writer is deeplyholistic in her attitude. But what she describes are

still mechanisms. No matter how dedicated she is

toa new vision, how hard she tries tobring in thenew understanding of wholeness in physics, thelanguage ofmechanistic science keeps getting inthe way. Thewholeness itselfdoes notyet appearin the actual calculations as a structure.

Some ofthe scientists referred to imply, andperhaps believe, that the problem ofthe bifurcation of nature has been solved; that the thoroughgoing emphasis on the whole which hasbeen achieved will now create a vision of the

universe in which we may at last be at home;that the enigma of the felt self, coexisting withthe machine-like play of fields and atoms, has

OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

been resolved bythenew emphasis onthecoordination of complex systems and the physicist'snew wayof paying attention to the whole.11

I believe their optimism is misplaced. Thecentraldilemma, the split betweenselfand matter—Whiteheads bifurcation — continues to

day almost as strongly as before. It has beenalleviated, perhaps just a littie, by the prospectof a new vision and by the prospect of a visionof the whole. But that vision has not yet beenachieved, scientifically, in a form which allowsthe human self to find its place. Because thesenew theories explicidy concern themselves withthe whole, they appear to have overcome the

mechanistic difficulties.However, the newvisionwhich has emerged from these events in sciencehas still only improved the earlier mechanisticscience by focusing better on the whole.

Thepersonal, the existence offelt "self" in theuniverse, the presence ofconsciousness, andthe vitalrelation between selfand matter— none of thesehave entered the picture yet, in a practical orscientifically workable way. In that sense theworld picture, even as modified, still deals onlywith the inert—albeit as a whole. The most

fundamental problem with the mechanisticworldpicture has still not — yet— been solved.

Whitehead s rift remains.

6 /THE CONTINUING LACK OF A UNIFYING COSMOLOGY

Can religion help? Could there be some modification of science by religion, to "combine"(somehow) the materialdescription given byscience, with a spiritual description given byreligion?

During the last twenty years there hasbeen— worldwide— a surge of renewed interest in religion, among scientists and, of course,among others in the world at large.12 There hasbeen rekindled interest in various forms of spirituality, schools of religion flourish, seventypercent of scientists readily admit to believing inGod in some sense, there is almost a wave to re

unite some form of religion, ancient or modernor super-modern, with our understandingoftheworld. Some forms are invented. Some are com

binations of eastern and western, or of primitivewith sophisticated. Some of the recent sciencedescribedabove,in section 4, has an almost spiritual tone, or a quasi-spiritual leaning.

But does any of this activity have the capacity to change our world picture, and make itmore accurate, more believable, or more able to

cement us to the world, more able to unite our

our knowledge of matterwith our feeling ofself?I do not think so. The trouble is that our

viewof matter is flawed: and nothing about reli

l7

gion or spirituality, as practiced or conceived today, has the powerto change it.

Briefly stated, the problem is that the manyspiritual suggestions and beliefs which resoundin the world today are not coherent with the underlyingmechanistic picture ofthe substance ofthe world. They are not on the same playingfield. Spiritual overlays on our underlying picture are, in myview, insights— hopes, fears, intuitions, aspirations, a mixture of spiritualtruths and wishful thinking — but they are insights which do not add to our understanding ofthe way the universe actually works. They areundoubtedly sincere. But they are not made tosquare with the underlying mechanicalpicture. Theunderlying physical picture has too little roomfor them, cannot yet accommodate them, has notyet, in myview, been modified to make it possible to include them. The substance which the

20th-century world was made of remained theinert, mechanical space-time of Descartes,Newton and Einstein, of quantum mechanicsand the string theorists. This mechanical substance is our cake. So far, our spiritual viewsandethical views are only frosting on this cake,whichdo not penetrateor affectthe waythe cakeworks. And make no mistake, quantum me-

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

chanics too, though widely heralded as "non-mechanistic," is still a picture in which everything takes place in thespace time ofinert substance ... the play ofconfigurations, albeit wonderful configurations, on the canvas of inertspace and matter.

Even the Pope and the Dalai Lama todayhave a mechanical view ofthe nature of matter.

Allpeople alive today are living, for thelargepart,in amentalworldwhich isdominatedbyamechanist picture,even when they consider themselves tobe spiritual, even when they hold spiritual, or religious, or ethicalbeliefs, andtry to live by these beliefs,because there is no alternative. That, at core, is

the rub.A conviction about spirituality isnotthesameasa coherentpictureof things in the worldwithin whichspiritualityor goodness make sense.

It is this ongoing rift between themechanical-material pictureofthe world(whichwe accept as true) and our intuitions aboutselfand spirit (which are intuitivelyclearbut scientifically vague) that has destroyed our architecture. It is destroying us, too. It has destroyedour sense of self-worth. It has destroyed our

belief in ourselves. It has destroyed us and ourarchitecture, ultimately, by forcing a collapseof meaning.

In order to have an architecture in which

our own lives and the qualityof our surroundings, the buildings, too, have meaning, we mustfind a new form of physics, a modified physicsin which self and matter can be reconciled. We

have not been sufficiendy aware to what extentour own 20th-century cosmology—because ofits focus on the inert—has undermined our ca

pacity to produce buildings that have life. Of allthe periods of human history, ours is perhapsthe period in which architecture has been mostbarren spiritually, most infected by banality. Imyself have become aware only slowly duringthe last thirty years, of the waythat this artisticbarrenness follows directlyfrom our contemporary mechanism-inspired cosmology. But I havefinally cometo believe that it isjust the prevailingviews we hold about the mechanical nature of

the universe whichhaveleddirecdyto a situationin which great buildings — even buildings oftrue humility—almost cannot be made.13

7 / TEN TACIT ASSUMPTIONS WHICH

UNDERLIE OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

To underscore the gravity ofthe need for modification, I shall nowdescribe ten assumptions —tacit, but widely held in today'sworld—whichmust disappearfrom our world-picture in orderto make a vital architecture possible.

Scientists oftenlike to saythat the materialistview ofpresent-day science ispotentially consistent with nearly anyview of ethics or religionbecause it says nothing about these subjects.14

Stricdy speaking, the logicof this viewcanbe upheld.But what governs peoplesviewoftheworld is not only logic, but alsowhat is impliedby this logic, what is drawn by extension fromthis logic. This is what I meant to say earlierabout the meaninglessness of our present con

ception of the universe. Strictly speaking, thefacts of physics and astrophysics do not implythat the universe is meaningless. But the waythese facts are presently drawn, the largerconception of the world which we have formed atthesame timewehave beenforming ourphysics,does suggest—even strongly imply—that theworld is meaningless. It does this, because alongwith legitimate assumptions that underlie physics and biology, deeper-lying tacit assumptionsare also carried in.

Indeed, tacit assumptions have entered ourpictureofthe worldso pervasively that it is fromthem that we have got the picture ofthe universethatisdistressing us.Thoughtheywere originally

18

OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

inspired by mechanistic philosophy, they themselves go far beyond the strict discoveries of science. It is these &)w?</-mechanistic or ultra-mechanistic assumptions whichcontrol muchofwhatwesay and think and do today, and did sayand think and do throughout the 20thcentury.Inmyviewtheseassumptionspersistasassumptionsaboutmatter, evenin the contextofthe newspiritualized holistic science I have discussed above.

These ultra-mechanistic assumptions aboutmatter—not strictly justified by mechanisticscience itself, but inspired by it and encouragedbyit — haveshapedour attitude to art and architectureand societyand environment. They havemade good architecture almost impossible.

To keepthe text brisk, I have placed discussionof these ten assumptions in the notesat theend of the chapter. That way, a reader to whomthese assumptions are already obvious, will notneed to struggle through them.

The first tacit assumption which has crept in isan exaggerated form ofan ideathat, in a modestform, is essential as a tool in science:

tacit assumption i. What is true, is onlythe body ofthose facts which can be represented aslifeless mechanisms. (Discussion in the note)15

A damaging offshoot from assumption #1isthe widespread and nowadays accepted assumption thatvalue issubjective. This assumption hasbecome nearly the centraltenetofmodern architecture. Thus:

tacit assumption 2. Matters ofvalue inarchitecturearesubjective. (Discussion inthenote)16

The pressure to view all matters of valueas personal and idiosyncratic has been furtherintensified as a result of a further assumption

something like this:tacit assumption 3. Modern conceptions

ofhuman liberty require that all values be viewedas subjective. The subjective nature of value givesthe private striving of each individual person —even when vacuous or image-inspired or greed-inspired— the same weight. Attempts to putvalueon an objectivefooting are to be viewed with suspicion. (Discussion in the note)17

A further tacit assumption moredirecdyasserts the meaninglessness of the world:

tacit assumption 4. The basic matter ofthe world is neutral with regard to value. Matteris inert. The universe is made of inert materialwhich blindly follows laws of combination andtransformation. (Discussion in the note)18

The meaninglessness ofthe mechanist cosmology we have inherited is further due to thedisconnection, within our picture, of what weseeas beingoutside ourselves (the matterwhichwe see as a mechanism) and our experience ofwhat seemsto be inside us (which we experienceas self). This may be summarized as:

tacit assumption 5. Matter and mind,the objective outer world and the subjective innerworld are taken tobe twoentirely different realms,different inkind, and utterly disconnected. (Discussion in the note)19

The disconnection between the outer world

ofphysics, and the innerworld ofself, finds vividexpression in the strange and nearly meaninglessviewof art which dominated a considerable partof20th-century life.This viewmight becharacterized as:

tacit assumption 6. Art is an intense

and powerful socialphenomenon, but one that hasno deep importance in the physical scheme ofthings,and therefore no basic role in the structure of theuniverse. (Discussion in the note)20

The "lost" role of art comes nowhere into

view asstrongly, in mymind,asin ourperceptionof the rift between ornament and function in a

building. I believe that, without knowing why,20th-century people learned to subscribe to:

tacit assumption 7. Ornament andfunction in a building are separate and unrelatedcategories. (Discussion in the note)21

The separated roles given to ornament andfunction come to a head in a still more "outra

geous," though more veiled, tacit assumption:tacit assumption 8. At aprofound level,

architecture isirrelevant. The task ofbuilding has nospecial importance, except insofaras itcontributes topracticalfunction through engineering, or to material wealththrough image. (Discussion in thenote)22

19

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

The sequence of assumptions approaches itsculmination in what is,perhaps, oneofthe mostdamaging assumptions of all:

tacit assumption 9. The intuition thatsomething profound is happening in a great workofart is, in scientific terms, meaningless. (Discussion in the note)23

And finally one mayformulate thefollowingassumption whichbringsus face to face with theultimate source of the meaninglessness weexperience:

tacit assumption io. The instinct that

there is some kind of deeper meaning in the world

is scientifically useless. It has to be ignored as asubject of serious scientific discussion. (Discussionin the note)24

I believe these ten assumptions do existtacitly throughout our everyday lives today. Although thousands of modern books and poemsand paintings have helped people assert andaffirm their sense of meaning in the world,the world-picture itself the scientific world-picture, continues to assert the blind meaninglessness of the physical matter in the world,and of the physical matter we ourselves aremade of.25

8 / INSPIRATION FOR A FUTURE PHYSICS

You may privately consider my formulation ofthetacit assumptions to be caricatureswhich do notcorrespond to your own convictions aboutvalue,or art, or the meaning of things in the world.25Nevertheless, even at thevery moment of tryingto preserve some thread of a connection to thevalue of existence —some way of doing it thehomage which the intensity of feeling it evokesdemands —in almost every attempt, themodernpersonisprevented fromembracing hisownfeelings in any full sense, because today's cosmologyand the undercurrents I have tried to articulate in

the ten tacit assumptions simply don't allow it.Sad as it is to insist on it, I believe we must

admit to ourselves that, broadly speaking, someversion of these ten tacit assumptions does represent the general a//ra-mechanistic tradition of20th-century science and technology, especiallyasthis tradition has impact on questions ofvalueand art, and on the art of building. These tacitassumptions form the mental prison which wecurrently inhabit; they are the origin of themeaningless world-picture which quiedy makespeople depressed andalienated. Even though wemaykick, and rail, and protest that we are afterallconnected tosome deeper substance, thissystem of assumptions is the current view of theuniverse in which we live.

Yet nearly every sensitive person who examines his own feelings carefully will recognizethat he experiences great discomfort in theframework of these tacit assumptions. Who hasnot had the feeling, listening to a Mozart's 40thsymphony, or to Bach's B-minor Mass, thatsomething magnificent is happening, that insome inner sense, the heavens are opening, andthat this structure of sound somehow reaches in

and hits the heart? But nomatter how deep thisfeeling, the mechanistic cosmology contained inthe ten assumptions of the last few pages is notconsistent with it. According to this mechanisticcosmology, the Mozart is a soothing pattern ofsound which happens (for physiological orcognitive reasons) to besoothing. Perhaps it activatessome pleasure center in thebrain. Butcertainlythis cosmology cannot admit, or formulate, theidea that the Mozart somehow strikes to the core

of the cosmos ... and that our pleasure in ithappens because werecognize thisfact, and takepart in it. Thus the Mozart is, in the mechanisticframework, ultimately considered trivial.Whether itgives pleasure ornot, it certainly doesnot in any physicist's sense strike to the coreof existence.

Untilnow, thiskindofproblem hasnotbeenthought ofas aserious problem byphysicists. The

20

OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

lack ofa serious answer to thequestion: What ishappening when you hear a piece ofMozart? hasnotbeen seen as aproblem inphysics. Ifithas beenseen at all, it has been seen as a minor problemin applied psychology, certainly not asa clue to apossible mismatch between the current physicalpicture oftheworld, andtheway theworld reallyis. But that is the whole problem. In physics therearerepeatedenunciationsofthe idea that the lawsofphysics constitute,ormightconstitute, atheoryof everything. For example, Stephen Hawking,Professor ofAstronomy at Cambridge, speakingofphysics: "Our goal is nothingless than a completedescription ofthe universe we live in. In thenext chapter I will try to ... explain how peoplearetrying to fittogetherthepartial theories I havedescribed to form a complete unified theory thatwould cover everything in the universe." and "Acomplete consistent unifiedtheoryisonlythefirststep; our goal is a complete understanding of theevents around us, and ofour own existence."26

This is the underlying belief shared widely,sometimes perhapsunconsciously, by manyeducated people in society. Physics has constructedapictureof reality, whichpurports to bea pictureof everything and the way that everything reallyis—yetit fails to incorporate fundamental experience, and fundamental intuitions. We experience the fact, intuitively, that the Mozart seemsto have somethingessentialin it. But the presenttheory of physics cannot make sense of it.

So far, within the frameworkof physics, thismismatch between feeling and theory has beenignored. Butlookwhat happens asa result. Whatit means is that we have a certain experience,momentary perhaps, something we consider ahaze of emotion ... a feeling we recognize as

deep, as vitally important ... it lasts for a fewseconds, perhapsevenfor a few minutes ... andthen our rude cosmology dismisses it.

The same thinghappens a thousand times aday. When we enter agreat building, see the deepblue of the light in the nave of Chartres fill thechurch, orwalk down alane inaforgotten villagein England, andthesame feelings pass across ourconsciousness ... again we rule it out. The samehappens even with a fleeting moment at a children's birthday, when thecake isbrought in, candles flickering, glowing in the half dark, and foramomentasmallvoiceinusgasps.. .butquickly,once again,we are brought back (more truly, webring ourselves back)to our ordinary reality.

It happensevenwith the beauty of a flowerat the roadside. Looking at this flower, againthe feeling strikes: the knowledge that in thismiracle, somehow, lies the whole beauty of theworld. But again, because there is no room forthis thought in our cosmology, we brush awaythe thought, dismiss it as too soft, too romantic... and come backonce again to our harsh realityin which space is neutral, the flower is neutral,we are neutral, all well-behaved machines, fol

lowing the rules of our creation and behavior.The ultra-mechanist cosmology we have

taken in with our 20th-century mother's milktherefore cuts across our experience constantly.It forces us to dismiss, treat lighdy, all thoseprecious feelings we have, of meaning in theworld, of somethingwonderful ... and replacesit by a dull, gray, matter-of-factness which isnot matter-of-fact at all, but was invented byDescartes and others of his time, and is now

merely mouthed by us because we do not knowof an alternative.2'

9 / THE CONFRONTATION OF ART AND SCIENCE

Let us go back to the essential question thatmust lie at the root of any believable cosmology:What is the life that we discern in things?28

In Book 1,1 described the inner life ofbuildings as a real phenomenon. What kind of phenomenon is that inner life?In chapter 6 ofBook

THE LUMINOUS GROUND

4, I shall go further to describe how in a greatbuilding or great painting where the most profound color phenomena occur, something sometimes happens that I call inner light, a statewhere colorsare both subdued and shining brilliantly. I suggest you look at the examples onpages 158-239. Theinner light isanextension ofthe life in things, a deeper version of the phenomenon of life.What is this inner light whichcan occur in paintings?

Contemporary science —if it tried to dealwith the phenomenon of life in works of art—would probably have to say something along thefollowing lines: Perhaps when the colors arecombined in a verysubde and harmonious way,somehow a special resulting structure or condition arises, and this structure or condition then

causes an effect, or a reverberation, or response,in the body, or in the central nervous system.Perhaps it is an archetypal connection to innercognitive structures. Crudely put, the arrangementofcolors zapsthe centralsystem. And thereyouare.29

Yet I am quite certain, intuitively, that whatis happening when colors form inner light in agreat painting, is something more significant,somethingwhich has real meaning. Somehow, Ibelieve that it touches to the core of things.Somehow, something deep and essential in theuniverse— not just in us— is being awakenedby the inner light of a great painting. In short, Ibelieve in the seriousness and significance ofthephenomenon.

The present-day scientific modeof thinkingis forced to bypass this intuition. It has no goodway of letting it be true. But we still face thequestion,What isthe inner light which occursinagreatpainting byFraAngelico or in the nave ofChartres? Is this merely a subjective phenomenon where a certain arrangementof colors zapsthe central nervous system? Or is it a phenomenon in which something penetrates to the heartof existence, to the heart ofwhat the universe is"?

Today'sscientists, especially the more technologically oriented, maytend to believe the former. Whether or not theyareprivately artisticor

religious, as professional scientists they willtend —today—to assume thatsome "zapping"model of the first kind must explain the phenomenon, even though wedo notyetknow howsuch a zapping model works! Theywill tend towantto say that all that is happening is that thenervous system, its cognitive structure, is somehowbeingzapped.

Painters, musicians, and architects, on theother hand—especially the better ones—willsay that in some form it is the second of these twowhichmustbe true. The zappingideais too trivial and ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Here lies a confrontation. It is not true that

scientists don't appreciate art. Many appreciateart very deeply. But they have not, usually,thought about art as a phenomenon in the deepand seriousscientificway they think about otherphenomena. They enjoy art, they appreciate it.But in their presentmodeof thought, ifforced toconsider some particular event in art — like theshining ofthe inner light in a great painting—then they will feel virtually forced to assumesomekind of model ofthe cognitive system being zapped, because that is the only kind ofmodel they know at the moment. It is the onlywaytheycan imagine, of making sense.

This, precisely, ismypoint.The onlyreasonscientists might have a naive picture ofthe phenomenon is that, as scientists, they haven'tthoughtabout this kind of thing verycarefully.What I have presentedin the nature of orderis an extension of science, written by someonewho has thoughtabout these kinds of phenomenacarefully, and hasbegun—just begun—toseewhat the structure of thesephenomenamustbe. According to what I havedescribed in thesefour books, it seems that matter-space mustsomehow be a potentially living kind of stuff,perhaps even a potentially conscious stuff—anyway, at the veryleast, center-making stuff, orwhole-making stuff.

Somehow, and for some reason, the moreintensely that centers arecreatedin anygiven region in space, the more intensely this region ofspace becomes connected with the human per-

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OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

son or the human self. That is the origin of lifeand inner light. But there is simply nothing inourpresent scientific pictureofthe physical universe which hints at anything like that.

The apparent confrontation between artand science is not reallybetween "art" and "science" as two disciplines. Rather, it is betweentwo different views ofwhat kind ofstuffthe uni

verse is made of. It is a confrontation between

the idea that the world is made of purely mechanical stuff, similar in essence to the kind of

inert and abstractCartesian matter-space scientists have taken for granted for the last threehundred years ... and the idea that it must besome other kind of stuff, more personal, and farmore mysterious in its nature.

10 / A FUSION OF SELF AND MATTER

Physicists, certainly, must face this confrontation. Architects, too, mustface it.

What I haveto sayin the next chapters,restson the search for such a new cosmology: one inwhich the idea of great art is possible —evennecessary— as something which connects us tothe universe, something which can provide aproper underpinning forthe art ofbuilding.

The cosmology which I describe, as I workmy way through the task of reaching a deeperview of building, rests on the recognition oftheI — the source of our own self— as somethingreal, existing together with space and matter in

the universe, somethingwhich must be givenitsstatus, together with space and time, aspart of anew view of living structure in a more comprehensive materialviewof things.

In these chapters, and finally in the conclusion ofthe book onpages 317-38,1 put forward asketch of a modified cosmology that extendsphysics —away ofextending ourview ofmatterthat leaves our present physics nearly intact, yetadds to it and injects into it new features, notpresendy partofourpicture ofmatter, butcapable, inprinciple, ofmaking better sense ofeverything, and making better sense ofarchitecture.

NOTES

1. A sophisticated example of thisattempt to see theselfwhich we experience as aby-product ofthe play ofmatter (neurological process, etc), istobefound inDanielDennett, consciousness explained (Boston: Little,Brown and Co,1991). This isa sophisticated book, withan attempt tobuild aworkable and believable theory. Butit does not, in the least, explain theinterior awareness ofself. The argument simply sidesteps the real question, asany mechanistic explanation isbound tohave todo.

2. As Whitehead says, "How unfortunate that weshould be forced to conclude that in its own sad realitynature is a dull affair, soundless, scendess, colorless;merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaning-lessly..." from Alfred North Whitehead, science andthe modern world (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925, reissued 1932), 69. Andagain: "For us thered glow ofthesunset should beas much part ofnature asare the molecules andelectric waves bywhichmenof science would explain thephenomenon. It isfor natural phi

losophy toanalyze how these various elements of natureare connected.. .WhatI amessentially protestingagainstis the bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality,which, insofar as theyare real, are real indifferent senses.One reality would bethe entities such as electrons whichare the studyofspeculative physics.Thiswouldbethe realitywhich is there for knowledge; although on this theoryit is neverknown. For what is known is the other sort ofreality, which is the byplay ofthe mind. Thus there wouldbetwonatures, one istheconjecture, andtheother isthedream." From Alfred NorthWhitehead, the concept ofnature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920).See, also, Laurence Bright, O. P., whitehead's philosophyof physics(London andNewYork: Sheed andWard,1958), 19-24.Whitehead's problem remains unsolved today.

3. For a fuller explanation of my views, please seeBook1, chapters 7-10, especially chapter 8.

4. The text of this section was inspired by a seriesofvery stimulating discussions with Stuart Cowan. Stu-

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THE LUMINOUS GROUND

art felt, at first, that myemphasis on cosmological shift,as presented in this book, gave too little credit to theemerging theories ofthe manywriters mentioned in thischapter. I, on myside,feltthat theenormous contributionmade bythese scientists didnotyetsolve thecore problem.In the courseof severalmonths of 1998 and 1999, in a seriesofconversations Stuart and I succeeded in reconciling ourviews, and the text of this chapter, and of chapter6, theblazing one, both benefitedgreatlyfromourdiscussions.I am deeply grateful to him.

5. The work of these scientists may be found in alonglistofpublications includingthe following keytitles:H. R. Maturana and Francisco Varela, the tree ofknowledge (Boston: Shambala, 1987); Stuart Kauf-mann, the origins of order, self-organization and

selection in evolution (NewYork: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993); David Bohm wholeness and the implicate order (London: Routledge 8c Kegan Paul, 1980);J. S. Bell, SPEAKABLE AND UNSPEAKABLE IN QUANTUMmechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987); Mae-Wan Ho, the rainbow and the worm:the physicsof organisms (Singapore: World ScientificPublishing Co, 1998); Brian Goodwin, how the leopard changed his spots (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).

6. Results mainly stemming from Bell's theorem,andsince thenwidely discussed. For Bell's original paper,see J. S. Bell, speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics, 1987.

7. For example, in Stuart Kaufmann, the originsof order, self-organization and selection in evo

lution, 1993.

8. Fritjof Capra, the tao of physics (Berkeley:Shambala, 1975).

9. Quoted from a letterStuartwrote to mein 1998.In this letter, Stuart also referred to the works of Teilhardde Chardin, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, ErichJantsch, Lee Smolin, and Matthew Fox as major contributors to the newemerging vision.

10. Mae-Wan Ho, the rainbow and the worm :the physics of organisms, 1998, pp. io-n and 115.

11. Such confidence is implied, for instance, in thelast pages of Stuart Kaufmann's at home in the universe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

12. See, for example, HenryMargenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, cosmos, bios, theos (Illinois: La Salle,1992). Inanother book, Ken Wilbur assembled quotationsfrom Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Einstein, De Broglie,Jeans, Planck, Pauli and Eddington, showing that everyone ofthese men was a mystic, and "the very compellingreasons that they all became mystics," quantum questions (Boston: New Science Library, 1984).

13. I say thateven humble buildings cannot bemade,because the infection which comes from our mechanisticcosmology, ismainlyoneofarbitrariness — andthearbitrariness breeds pretension. In the presence of pretentiousness, true humility is almost impossible. A trulyhumble cottage even, seems beyond the reach of mostbuilders today.

14. This is a verycommonly expressed point of view.John Polkinghorne — both professor of mathematicalphysics at the University of Cambridge and an Anglicanpriest— has, among many others, emphasized it, andwritten about it. See, for instance, John Polkinghorne,the particle play (Oxford: WH. Freeman and Co.,1981), especially 124-26.

15. Articles in thousands of scientific journals presentlycontrolour growingpicture ofthe world. Eachyeartheycontainhundredsof thousandsof pages ofargument.These pages of scientific argument have one commonthread: they are all built on the assumption that what isdiscussable in science is the totality of models that canbe represented, in one form or another, as inanimatemechanisms. Even biological life itselfis represented insuch a fashion, as a phenomenon in a system of nonliving parts.

This was the central invention of Bacon and Descartes, and hasbeenthe prototype forvirtually all scientificexplanations since the time of Descartes. Ofcourse,the word mechanism is crude, and a more accurate modern version ofthe same idea would use the word "model"instead, where a model is understood to beany abstractmathematical system or mechanism, susceptible to exactthought, operating according toexactly formulated rulessuch as those formulated bymodern philosophers ofscience such as Percy Bridgeman and Karl Popper.

As scientists, we propagate this assumption amongourselves, in order to understand how things work. Wefocus onmodels, to make themodels help usunderstandwhat is goingon. But the careful useof models does notrequire us, also, toinject gratuitous assumptions about theinertness ofthe models intoourthought, or intotheauraof thoughtwithwhichwesurroundthe models. Most scientists willtellyouthat you areentitledto holdwhateveradditional extrabeliefs you wish. But the"extras" willbecharacterized as beliefs thus excluding them once againfrom theworld-picture, while thematerial inthescientificjournals will be characterized as hypothesis aboutfact.

As a result, although the use of Cartesian modelsin science isbeautiful, and useful, and powerful, it doesnot yet provide us with a wholly accurate picture of theway things are. Its use means that vital aspects ofreality,especially those which we can only see accurately throughfeeling—such as the degree oflife inbuildings —canbe represented only in a crude and distorted fashion.

Oursociety iscorrupted by this approach. Thetacitassumption that what is true is only that which can berepresented as a mechanical model, almost prohibits usfrom seeing life around us, orlife inbuildings, as it reallyis. Love, feeling, faith, art— the human dignities —have been subtly undermined because, regardless whattheirreal status is,theyhave become second-class citizensin the world of ideas. That has happened because theycannot be fitted nicely into the world of mechanisms.

16. Before the age of enlightenment there was, inmostcultures, somegroup of values to which one couldappeal, and to which people did appeal while buildingthe parts of their world. The source of these valueswas

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OUR PRESENT PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

different indifferent cultures. In some it was thought tobe "God," in others "ancestors," in others "tradition" or"law." Whatever the source, there was no doubt, at thattime, that there was indeed a (partially) uniform sourceof value widely understood throughout the culture, andofsuch akind thatnearly any act might bejudged againstit, inspired by it.

Today the situation isdifferent indeed. Whoamongus has not had the uneasy feeling that it is best not toassert one's own feelings of value too strongly in public,except aspersonal expressions of individual tasteor opinion? It is socially acceptable to state values publicly—but onlyso long as they are clearly presented as mattersofopinion, hence asmatters ofprivate value? Few peopletoday will dare to assert that some value theyperceive isin any sense actually true.

Among architects sober, public discussion of valuein buildings is rare. (One exception was the symposiumheld in Austin, Texas, March 1998, under the chairmanship of Michael Benedikt,which explicitly invited andencouraged architects to discuss value in buildings, andto do so in a waywhich tookvalueas a realphenomenon,not asa subjective one.)Newspaper critics onlyrarely tryto discuss valueof buildings as if it weresomething real,not merely an idiosyncracy. Even then, there is littlepublic debate about buildings. That is because the lackof a basis forjudging the life of buildings is a profoundembarrassment within the architecture profession. Thegreatsecret that contemporary architecture hasno soundethical basis, would be let out of the bag the momentserious debate about right and wrong, or good and badin buildings, were to begin. So public discussion of themerits of buildings is kept to a minimum, in order toavoid revealing the arbitrary and private character ofthe discussion.

17. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeanand American imperialism created a view of the worldin which many people on earth were considered ignorant, and in which it was taken for granted that theviews of white Victorian gentlemen were correct. Atthe end of the 19th century the new discipline ofanthropology was gradually able to attackthis Victorianpointof view, byestablishing the idea that each cultureis coherent in its own terms. This crucial idea helpedto dissolve racist and imperialist mentality, and helpedto forge a mental platform on which one could assertthat eachculture had its own dignity, its own Tightnessin its own terms.

In the last decades of the 20th century this movementwas extended to protect the rights of many groupsin society. Many distinguishable groups are now ableto assert the dignity of their values — whether it behandicapped people, people with various sexual preferences, subcultures of ethnic or religious particularity,groups of particular age, and so on. But the importanceof these movements, and the increase in human dignitytheyhave created, make it almost more difficult to assertgeneral truths in the realm of value. So, by the end ofthe20th century, the liberality andfreedom ofthe century's early years had helped to create an atmosphere of

pluralism inwhich nearly "anything goes," and in whichit had become intellectually almost impossible to assertthe Tightness of anyvalue — since to do so, wouldchallenge, and possibly undermine again, the political freedoms which had been so hard won.

Thus the idiosyncratic and private view of value,which began with the scientific revolution of the 17thcentury, has led to the assumption that value, valuation,andjudgment and taste, are so deeply embedded in therealm of individual rights that theyalmostcannot beseenas basedon an objective reality.

Perhaps because of this tacit assumption # 3, effortsto identify the living character of buildings are too oftenmet with skepticism, even anger.

18. Even the enormous changes in physics whichhavetakenplace duringthe 20thcentury, have not fundamentally changed this view. In the 19th century physiciststhought that the world was made of little atoms, likebilliardballs,movingand rearrangingthemselves on thebilliard table of space. Today, we have a conception ofultimate matter which is vastly more interesting, whereparticles are more like whirlpools of energy,wavelike incharacter, and where the process of combination anddestruction, more resembles some beautiful dance.

However, the physicist's idea that this matter orenergy isessentially lifeless, and moves blindlyaccordingto the laws of its process, has not changed. The particlesand fields are more interesting now— they even go sofar as to includethe possibilityof instantaneousconnectionofparticles onopposite sidesofthe universe in agreatundivided wholeness (demonstrated by Bell's theorem,J.S. Bell, op cit., by the experiments of Freedman andClauser, and bythe experiments of AlainAspect and hiscoworkers, J. Clauser, M. Horn, A. Shimony and R.Holt, phys. rev. lett, volume 28, 1972, 934-41, and A.Aspect, P. Grangier, and G. Roger, phys. rev. lett,volume 47,1981, 460-66). Even the provocative and startling conceptions introduced by these physicists, retainaviewof inert matter, following certainrules,asthe basisof theirrevisions in physics). Butin spite of thisadvance,theunderlying philosophical ideahaschanged verylittle.The matter, or energy, is still conceived as essentiallymachine-like, following certain rules, blindlybuffeting,pushing, changing, fascinating, capable of amazing surprises and great combinations, but still, nevertheless, atbottoma machine madeof inert parts dancing neutrallyaccording to the rules. Sir James Jeans's words "Theuniverse begins tolookmore likeagreatthoughtthanlikeagreat machine," written in1930, have, sofar, remained abeautiful and inspiring, but still empty, promise. (Seethe mysterious universe [Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1930], 148.) And it should be said, too,that recent developments in complexity theory, for alltheir ability to simulate complex life-like systems, alsoremain machine-like in their ultimate character. Theyillustrate the advances made in our understanding ofcomplexity, and ourability to define machines (models)whichcreate life-like structures. Butourcosmology itself,themachine-like picture ofspace, substance, andprocess,remains unaltered by these developments.

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THE LUMINOUS GROUND

19. This is the core of Whitehead's bifurcation. Buthistorically it goes back much further in time. The ideathattheouterworldcanbethoughtofashavingastructurewhich is distinct fromourselves, the divisionofworld intomind and matter, goes backatleast tothescholastics ofthe14th century. (See, for example, thediscussion throughoutPierre Duhem, medieval cosmology: theories of in

finity, place, time, void, and the plurality of

worlds [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985]).Andtheassumption thatthestructureoftheouterworld isseparate from ourown selfcombined withtheassumptionthat we can onlyreach truth by distinguishing objective(agreed-upon) outer reality from individual (and notagreed-upon) inner reality, isthe very foundation ofmodernscience. It isthe ideathat observations andexperimentsmustbe madeindependent ofthe observer.

The first 20th-centurycracks in the iceberg of thisassumption arrived within physics itself. They came withBohr's and Heisenberg's demonstrations that completelyobserver-free observations cannot exist at the level of

photons andelectrons (Niels Bohr, "The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,"nature [1928], volume 121,580-90and Werner Heisen-berg, "The Physical Content of Quantum Kinematicsand Mechanics" [1927J, reprinted in J. A. Wheeler andW H. Zurek, quantum theory and measurement[Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983], 62-86). Buttoday, seventy years after Heisenberg, mind and self stilldo not haveastatusin the world-picture that iscomparableto the statusofthe underlyingentitiesof20th-centuryphysics. Even among the scientistswho acceptthe existence ofcognitivestructures, it is still generally acceptedthat a cognitive structure is an artefact or product ofsome particular neurological activity. Even amongthosewho agree that manycognitivestructures are similar fromone personto another,there are few who believethat theinnerexperience of selfhasany fundamental connectionto the outer structures we observe in physics.

The mental conditions imposed on us by assumption # 5 make it hardto be at peace with oneself. Withinsuch a dualistic world-picture the self cannot itself besuccessfully included into the larger viewofthe universe(Again,Whitehead, the concept of nature.). Yet selfis what we experience of ourselves. How, then, couldtheuniverse seem comfortable to us?

20. I canimagine areader reacting to this formulationwith angrydenial. T would neverhold sucha crass view,"onecanimagine the reader thinking... "onthe contrary,many would insist that art is important, vital."

Yet how can the view that art is truly important betaken seriously, or even make sense, if it has to be consistent with a mechanist view of the universe? Since the

mechanical view of the world makes no room for value,exceptasanoutpouring of personal idiosyncracy, it createsno serious basis for artexcept as anoutpouring of privatevalue, orasacynical construction of artificial images. Andthat is exacdy what the 20th century— in architectureanyway—created time and again.

A mechanistic cosmology makes it difficult to formulate the idea that abuilding,or a painting, or a piece

of music could have anyinherent value. At best, for explanations of artto becoherent with the present mechanisticframework, theymightbebased onsocial realism (ascribing functional importance toworks which help society),or psychological realism (describing the value of worksof art in terms which appeal to human emotion).

These ideas are deeply conflicted. Is it not undeniably true thatcertain works of art— works thatwe describe as great works of the spirit — go much furtherthan mere social or psychological impact? For a personwho is inspired by the last paintings of van Gogh, byBach's Goldberg Variations, by Mahler's 9th symphony,by the sculptures of Jean Arp or Constantin Brancusi,or by the Baptistry in Florence, it is hard to escapethe certainty that these works are somehow genuinelyprofound anddo, somehow, interact with the fundamental scheme of things in the universe. Yet so far, in ourscientific pictureof the world, such an intuition has nocoherent place at all.Within the material universe of ourcurrent cosmology, the intuition cannot even beformulated.

21. Why isthis acosmological matter? It haditsoriginin the 19th century, when ornamentbecame somethingto be applied, not somethingarising organically from itscontext. Adolf Loos, trying to overcome a spurious anddisconnected attitudeto ornament, beganthe early 20th-century revolt against irrelevant and decadentornament.In pursuit of a less decadent form of art, he argued, ina famous catchword, that "ornament is a crime." SeeAdolf Loos, ornament and crime: selected essays,1897-1900 (Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 1998).By mid-20th century, later versions of this assumptionthen said, essentially, that all ornament should be removed from buildings and that their geometry shouldbe derived from function. This hinged on the tacitmessage thatwhatispractical isonlymechanical; andthatanyornamentor formwhich is not mechanical, is removable,unecessary. A profound way of seeing form in whichbothornament and function arose from asingle evolvingmorphology, did not yet exist.

Mid-century purity lasted until about 1970, whenarchitects started again, likebuilders of old, bringing inornament and shape out of sheer enjoyment. But eventhen, in the post-1970's postmodern works of the 20thcentury (which often have a frivolous attitude to shapeand ornament) theconceptual splitcaused byourmechanistic world-picture still exist. There is a functioningpart (the practical part), and animage part (the art part).In some ofthe latest buildings, builtduring thelast threedecades of the 20th century, this image part,because ofthe conceptual context, became truly arbitrary andabsurd.

The separation of ornamentfrom function is acosmological matter because it fits, andsupports, andstemsfrom, the mechanistic view. In a machine, the geometryof a thing exists in order to perform in a certain way.The alternative — thatboth geometry and function arepart ofone greater whole — implies thatorder, geometry,ornament, mighthave meaning andsignificance togetherwith function, asone body. This is indeedwhat I would

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argue. The goalof architecture is to intensifythe degreeof life in space. Function cannot then be a practicalmatter separate from beauty. All functional forms willalso be ornamental, as they are in nature. The artist,workingfromthis spirit,will naturallyand spontaneouslybring color, detail, and ornament into his work, becauseit is necessary to bring that space to greater life. And ifthat is true, it will imply, right away, that this thing isnot a machine. So, it is no surprise at all, that at theoutset of the 20th century Adolf Loos established thedoctrine that ornament is a crime. And it is no surpriseat all that in the late 20th century,when beautyof shapecould no longer be entirely ignored, a new and drasticformofseparation betweenformand functionwasintroduced in architecture, whereby shapes often became trivial— sometimes even funny or ridiculous. To see suchbuildings which border on the absurd because ofdrasticseparation of form and function, one has only to lookthrough thepages ofanyavant-garde magazine onarchitecture. Oudandish examples, made for reasons havingto do with image, not truth, are presented every monthfor the pleasure of their readers.

22. Few people would willingly admitthat they makethis assumption. And yet I do believe that in our tacitmechanistic world this assumption, too, exists withoutacknowledgement. It isvisible daily throughout contemporary behavior and practice. Is it notcommonplace, forinstance, that the design of a building startswith a program that defines different numbers of square feet todifferent functions, and that these square footage estimates arethenused byclient, architect, banker, planningcommittee,and soon, asa basisfordecidingthe adequacyof the design? This is true in most of the houses andoffice-buildings built in technological society.

Yetl have proved inBooks 2and 3thataliving building cannot be conceived this way, because the inner lawsofcenters, thewholeness ofthe conception, the relation tothe surroundings, are pushed into asubsidiary position bytoo great anemphasis onthe program. (In Book 2,1 havegiven some idea ofthe negative impact that can be madeonabuildingdesign bythis kind ofmechanistic adherencetoprogram.) Here isa tiny but clear example ofthewaythe building process in our society is routinely mechanized. Few contemporary architects would reject theuseofa building program; few lay people would question iteither. It is the norm. Yet their acceptance of this norm(and thisisonly one tinyexample) means thatreal beauty,real life, are pushed into a subsidiary position while thebuilding program, more concerned with efficiency ofadministration than with life, stays in a higherposition.

It is reasonable to conclude that architecture is viewedas irrelevant. Asociety in whichpeople routinely do somethingdifferent from that which creates life or beauty, cannot besaid tocare much about life or beauty. Our daily behaviorproves again and again, in thousands ofexamples likethis, that a tacit assumption about the irrelevance ofarchitecture is indeed partofthe mechanistic world picture thatwelive by. However much one might want tosay that buildings ought to be important in some deepsense, still, so long as we live ina mental world governed

byourpresentcosmological assumptions, weshallcontinually accept (and create) a world in which the shapingof buildings has only the most banal kind of practicalimportance.

23. Millions of peoplehaveexperienced, in the presence of some ancient work of art, the conviction thatsomething of massive importance is going on there. Yetour prevailing cosmology provides no way in which thisconviction maybe understood coherently together withthe restof our scientific knowledge. Bydefault,our cosmology relegates art to thestatusofan interestingpsychological phenomenon. Certainly it does notallow art equalstatuswith the awe-inspiring realities of the atom, or ofthe galactic universe.

This is not to say that scientists, like others, do nothave instinctswhich makethem feelthe deep importancethat a work of art can have. But, scientificallyspeaking,that is only a vague instinct at best. So far, it has noplace in the body of thoughts and concepts which makeupour fundamental picture of the world.

24. That is what our scientific civilization has beentelling us for three to four hundred years. Yet it is hardto deny the fact that many of us have instincts aboutdeeper meaning in theworld. The experience may come,perhaps, as a result of love, as a result of gazing at theocean, at a small flower.

The official position of 20th-century scientific philosophy said, explicitly, thatscience isneutral: it neitherconfirms nor denies the instinct that this experience isimportant (A nice discussion ofthe official position" isto be found several writings ofJames Wilk, forexample,"Metamorphology: Mind, Nature and theEmerging Science ofChange," in Diederik Aerts, ed., einstein meetsmagritte, volume 6, the blue book [New York:KluwerAcademicPublishers,1995]). However,the actualstate ofmind encouraged byourcurrent scientific cosmology is not neutral but negative. Since there is no officialplace for an instinct ofdeeper meaning tobe realized aspart ofthe consequences ofpresent day science, adherentsofthe current world-picture (our teenagers for example)are given little intellectual support for dwelling onsuchthoughts. The assumption therefore exists — nearly always tacit, ofcourse, rarely explicit — thatexperiences,ideas, which might lead toafeeling ofprofound meaningin the world are scientifically empty, and best kept atarm's length, away from the body ofprecise thought aboutthe world.

25. You the reader, yourself, may or may not makethese ten assumptions. But I suspect, even ifyou believethat you arc free ofthem, orrise above them — that, infact, to an extent which may surprise you, it is theseassumptions which inform your underlying picture ofyourself andyour place in the world.

There are two ways in which suchhiddenassumptions maybe revealed within aperson's pictureoftheworld.Suppose a person tells you that he believes the earth isround, not flat. However, you notice that this person hasasurprising reluctance to go far tothe cast, orfar tothewest. Nomatter what hesays, you may wonder ifafter all,this person does not believe the earth is flat. With each of

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THE LUMINOUS GROUND

the mechanistic assumptions, I have given examples ofthekind of behaviorwhichwe mayeachfind in ourselves —and which, in myview, showthat the moresubtleviewisjust frosting, and that the mechanistic assumption doesexist in us — even if concealed.

It is my viewthat the mechanistic view doesexistin mostof us as a mild form of practical certainty, whilethe morelife-centered or spiritualbeliefs do not—theyare morelike empty decoration on the surface, whicharenot capable of having any coherent impact,because theydo not all make practical sense together with everythingelse. In this sense,onceagain, I take the viewthat peopleare still caught in the mechanistic paradigm. No matterwhat peoplesay, they often continue to behave as if theseassumptions are true. There is no practical certaintyattached to the other more spiritual views, which leaddirecdy to different behavior, so once again the residueof behavior suggests that the ten assumptions are whatis, in fact, controlling our mental picture of ourselvesand of the universe.

26. The quotations aretaken from Stephen Hawking,a brief history of time (New York: Bantam Books,1988), 13,153,169. Stephen Weinberg andother importantcosmologists and contemporary physicists commonlymake similar claims and assertions. Incidentally, although Hawking became famous for his reference tothe mind of God (brief history, 175), nevertheless thesubstance of his cosmology remains steadfastly mechanist, and addresses none of the problems I have raisedin this chapter. He may be commended for having theinstinct that the subject needed to be mentioned by a

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physicist, but not fordealingwith it, which he did not do.27. Foran artist the situation isperhapsevenworse.It

isonlypossible to makethingswell, and deeply, out ofthefeelings that adeeperconsciousness ignites.Buthereagain,the old cosmology refuses to allow it in. Once again, ifwewant to retainour pictureofthe world,as it hasbeenpresented to usbyphysics andbiology, wemustconstandyattack,invade, undermine, refuse, thesefeelings. And ontheotherhand, if someone doeschoose to liveperpetuallyin the knowledge of thesefeelings, then the oldcosmologyitselfmustbeforced out,and this personthen lives withouta forceful or coherent scientific pictureofthe world.Is itanywonder that some of thosewecallartists,during theperiodofthiscosmology, become insane,areforced toturntheir backs uponthe world?

28. I am very grateful to IngridFiksdahl-King, withwhom I had an extensive discussion about these matters

in 1980. The text of the following section is based onour conversation.

29. I have no doubt some readers will say to themselves, "Here Alexander is going too far, surely no onecould be silly enough to propose such a thing seriously."No? As I write, a book by a prominent professor ofpsychology has appeared, in which he describes the human mind asamechanical system, andwhere heexplicitlystates thatwithin themind, music works merely as"auditorycheesecake." Steven Pinker,how the mind works,(London: Allen Lane, 1998). See also the humorous review ofPinker's book byJames Langton, "The manwhothinks he is a computer," the Sunday telegraph, December 7, 1997, SundayReview, 3.