Frances to Luis and William... 1. For a skilled and learned architect to engage in the practice of architecture would seemingly require some sentience and experience on their part to start with, even before any inference and intelligence. Any deep seated drive that might move them and subliminally guide them would be engrained in mind as a paradigm belief system. This paradigm might further be the locus of any theory included in the mix of beliefs. If the inner belief however is wrong or bad or even evil, and if the theory is also false, then the architect and the architecture will likely suffer. Whether the architect is mentally ill or well, and their paradigms are bad or good, they would still need to rely on their buddies for some assurance of normality. The common sources of paradigms are for example found in the roots of deity and academy and polity; and these roots are not always good. 2. It is agreed that any dogma that is set in mind as a rigid paradigm or static theory of architecture must be constantly cleansed or even purged. Any good theoretical paradigm must be free and fluid and flexible so that it may grow. In angloamerican semiotics this purging process is called interpretation, and in francoeuropean semiology and structuralism it is called deconstruction. All thought emerging after the hidden paradigm must therefore be initially approached with a degree of skeptical doubt and critical judgement and cynical belief. This means that every kind of mental action must be held prone to fallibility and thus probability. The start of all thought would thus be doubt, and not belief as the embedded paradigm, which paradigm belief may nonetheless inadvertently drive and steer the doubt. 3. There still remains the thorny issue of whether intelligent theory comes before or after experiential practice. If it comes after, then there would still presumably be other kinds of driven beliefs remaining as paradigms in mind. If instinctive tendency is preparatory to theory, and experiential practice is contributory to theory, then they both come as causes before theory, which makes theory a consequence of practice and then of tendency, but nonetheless also regressively consummatory of practice and tendency. It seems however that the role of tendency and practice and theory in architecture is combinatory and necessary, whatever their hierarchical progressive sequence. 4. It also remains to be seen whether tendency as a preexistent preparatory fact is thus indeed not the static paradigm of architecture. For archaeologists and anthropologists the requirement that architecture is say exclusively human for example is a static paradigm and criterion.
Luis wrote... I would imagine that most 'practitioners' of art and architecture primarily 'just do it' and are not hampered by a static conception of what they do. Each person brings a unique set of faculties to the task and each task is also unique leading towards non serial repetition. Think of it as a 'cognitive DNA recombination'. I am not trying to dissuade you from your inquiry, but this is an important issue that must be incorporated in your theory. Any static theory is doomed from the onset. William wrote... Also, changes occur in conventions for varied reasons, including shifting values. I've been reading about geology and so I imagine an analogy likening changing conventions to a shifting surface sliding over a fixed mantle. Like a volcanic source, the cause -- the source of art -- may be fixed but the eruption may occur in a new location and produce a new landscape.
