Ithnquredy2rytdatbukkeli go4it2fyndawt gtluc On May 18, 2009, at 8:28 AM, Frances Kelly wrote:
Frances to Chris belatedly... Your insistence that metaphysical philosophy and empirical science cannot be bridged well, at least in support of exploring a theory of architecture, and that the only value of aesthetics is price, may be too limited and tethered. With metaphysical aesthetic philosophy at one apposite pole, and with empirical artistic science at one opposite pole, the best central and pivotal bridge might very well be semiotics, to include its syntactics and semantics and pragmatics. It is after all signs that allow objects like artistic architectural products to bear scientific identification and designation and interpretation and discussion and so on. To deny the existence of any useful bridge, linking if not closing the extreme outer brackets, is to hold that no feedback of substance between the poles can be expected. The application of logical methods in empirical science to the individual products of artistic architecture will certainly reveal each one in the main to be a holistic system unto itself alone and in its own right. Furthermore, observations and investigations by inquiry or research of each architectural product will show that it is an artistic system that is related at least by formal iconic similarity to every other artistic system that precedes and succeeds it. This empirical information about each artistic work being a holistic system can then be fed back to metaphysical speculation to further reveal that the whole wide world of art at least is one holistic system made up of related holistic systems that are connected at least as iconic signs. It is a search for truth about the objects and works of art, to include the products of architecture, in that they ought to be individually artistic yet globally aesthetic. Frances partly wrote... "The main task for pragmatism now by most reports seems to be a search for a sound means that can bridge the drifting gap between metaphysical philosophies on the one hand and empirical sciences on the other." Chris wrote... This is a bridge to nowhere, especially in aesthetics, where the only empirical value is price. So it would be far more pragmatic to abandon that task and seek a philosophy of architecture from an architect whom the pragmatist admires.
