> Ian > Continuing the engineering analogies. > Submarine and (heavier or lighter than air) aircaft both depend on > foundations. Banks and shores and beds of the body of water, > gravitation of a planet for the atmosphere. So forget trains and boats > and planes, and forget hi-rise glass buildings and not even > space-elevators free us from this ... > > Spacecraft ... ? ... well, once we're are in deep space independent of > not only planetary but galactic gravitation ... you architects may be > on your own, for a while .... but we will simply arrive at the cosmic > question of what the universe(s) is / are, and we find another glazed > boundary through which we'd love to engineer a door, or even get a > sneak preview of what lies beyond ... but ... > > Oops we're back where we started. The Restaurant at the End of the > Universe, bleeding-edge glazing, great light show, great sound-track, > but all menu and no food. The fly-bottle. > > Turtles all the way down.
Ian, This is good! I will leave it to you to decide if we should branch this off as a new topic by subject, I am not versed in "listiquette." But it seems to me we could take this on its own course if you are game. I have two ideas to carry forward, having thought about the analogy and your recent response. First is that I think the art/science of building buildings is a manifest microcosm of the problems we see with science and theism. The art of building a building, building it in a Quality way, requires a synthesis of a wide range of arguably disparate, and much of the time conflicting requirements. Engineering and Architecture are primary. (By Architecture, I am speaking of the esoteric understanding of it being the artful crafting of space and form for human use and habitation, not the dressing commonly associated as "architecture", eg: style) A synthesized use of those skills results in a greater quality end product. Witness Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Caanan, or Santiago Calatrava's work; the former engineering in harmony with an architectural solution, the latter an architecturally harmonic engineering solution. Both A and E can produce a building or a structure, but their synthesized approach results in greater quality. Why? The answer surely lies in the MoQ, and is reinforced and better understood by knowing that the history of the two professions had an original unified profession/craft in Medieval stonemason guilds. Second is in response to your "turtling" of my original metaphor. You are accurate I think in that exposition. I do think though that in having taken it to its logical extreme, out in interstellar space, the floating spaceship, unbound from essence, it is for all intents and purposes its own essence in that regard, and that is where we can see if the metaphor can take us anywhere we might not have gone had we left it earthbound. Its in the void, literally and I'd argue figuratively/mystically. The walls have become the foundations. There's nothing to see outside. All we have is the interior of the "house", necessarily limited in extent (an infinite house would leave no exterior void, right?) Windows have become pointless, in fact are a liability (heat sinks, weak spot.) Exterior doors have become pointless, also a liability as weak spots (hinges, jamb air leaks.) Paper them over, they no longer serve a purpose. Interior windows may heighten the living experience, but no longer offer vistas to places we can't go. Interior doors no longer open to new rooms, only rooms we've been in before and are purely functional in nature, no longer expositional. Where can we go? Where can we look? The only place left is inward. I think the question we are left with then is what does it mean to "go inward" in this context? Metaphorically, relative to science and theism, what does "go inward" mean? This thought direction I'd like to pursue if you are game... My initial train of though, without analyzing it, is to say "experience." Ultimately, assuming time keeps working as it does now, experience is all we'd have left. And I think that means we're back to MoQ, but without theism *or* science. Without architecture *or* engineering. Just a synthesized "profession" with a different goal for its "end product." Your thoughts?
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