See below. Thus for Frances, normal means perfect, a state rarely if ever attained, except when, clumsily, as in the Declaration of Independence, Americans seek the "more perfect". There is something likable in pretending that a perfect object is also its normal state. Yesterday, in walking a prairie with a color chart of wildflowers in hand, we noticed many imperfect examples of the spider wort in bloom, at least in comparison to the illustration in the guide. Was the illustration wrong or was each plant just a bit off? During the best days of the Renaissance, artists regarded it as their duty to "perfect" nature's yearning to fulfill God's plan and thus represented objects with that extra touch of divinity enabled by their own greater proximity to the Creator and their invention of genius as a spark of the divine?
It's no surprise that Frances takers this notion of normal as equivalent to perfect because it's the thesis of her master, Peirce, who was aiming to bridge his scientific outlook with a religious conviction. But what happens to her arguments when we read the word perfect whenever she writes the word normal? WC ________________________________ From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 11:04:20 PM Subject: RE: Architecture and Philosophy: Review Frances to William and Cheerskep with respect... In realist philosophy, the normal is the ideal norm and this normative norm is simply what ought to be, while the abnormal is what ought not to be. The normal is thus not the ordinary nor is it the average. The idea of the abnormal being deemed a handicap or a disadvantage seems to be beyond what ought not to be. The normal norm is thus not what was or is or could be or will be or would be or even must be, but what might be found as being loosely what should be. The norm is an objective logical construct, but one realized indirectly and subjectively in mind, which mentality of mind happens to make pure objective logic degenerative, and thus what ought to be. If my profoundly and multiplicitously muddled assertion, that art and science are both acts of only normal humans, and tend to be engaged in naturally by instinct without any undue nurturing, needs to be clarified in regard to the term normal without resorting to some unclear synonym like ordinary or common or average, then perhaps some correction might be offered. The normal for constructs like buildings in architectural theory after all seems to be of some importance for experts in the field.
