Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
Life and beauty in the built world arise only from processes which allow living structure to unfold. The secret lies in knowing, as nature does, what must happen in what order: what sequence of events allows a living form to unfold successfully.
Here, in Book 2, Alexander puts forward a fully developed theory of living process. He defines conditions for a process to be living: that is, capable of generating living structure. He shows how such processes work, and how they may be created. At the core of the new theory is the theory of structure-preserving transformations. This concept, new in scientific thinking, is based on the concept of wholeness defined in Book 1: A structure-preserving transformation is one which preserves, extends, and enhances the wholeness of a system. Structure-preserving transformations provide the means for any step-by-step process - social, biological, architectural, or technical - to reach configurations which are most profound, most capable of supporting life. The process of creation - whether in the formation of a single object, or in the piecemeal aggregation of a town - requires this sort of generative process, a careful and deliberate sequence of steps in which each step creates the context for the next one, and each next wholeness is derived from the previous wholeness.
Here, in Book 2, Alexander puts forward a fully developed theory of living process. He defines conditions for a process to be living: that is, capable of generating living structure. He shows how such processes work, and how they may be created. At the core of the new theory is the theory of structure-preserving transformations. This concept, new in scientific thinking, is based on the concept of wholeness defined in Book 1: A structure-preserving transformation is one which preserves, extends, and enhances the wholeness of a system. Structure-preserving transformations provide the means for any step-by-step process - social, biological, architectural, or technical - to reach configurations which are most profound, most capable of supporting life. The process of creation - whether in the formation of a single object, or in the piecemeal aggregation of a town - requires this sort of generative process, a careful and deliberate sequence of steps in which each step creates the context for the next one, and each next wholeness is derived from the previous wholeness.
Posted by Thomas
