thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Alexander is important because architecture is important. It gives the social, intellectual and spiritual order a physical form that helps mold our lives. Also, it’s large, solid, visible and very expensive, so it’s difficult to ignore issues created by the kind of order or disorder it embodies. Discussing architecture is therefore an indirect way of … More ...
Alexander’s outlook has definite implications when applied to society. It rejects the idea of imposing concept and image on reality, and so is anti-constructivist. It favors particularity of position and so is anti-egalitarian and anti-inclusivist. It accepts that patterns that reappear in a variety of traditions very likely have something to them that rationalism should … More ...
If Alexander is right in The Nature of Order, what do we do about it? His examples of good design (except for some wonderful images from Matisse) are almost all from the vernacular, often from times and places like the European middle ages when artists were anonymous because even high art was vernacular. He’s … More ...
Alexander says his views on architecture are based on “a conception of the world in which the air we breathe, the stones and concrete our city streets are made of—all have life in them … This is not merely a poetic way of talking. It is a new physical conception of how the world is … More ...
I’ve just finished reading The Phenomenon of Life, the first volume of Christopher Alexander’s four-volume work The Nature of Order.
It’s really extraordinary. For those who aren’t familiar with him, Alexander’s an architect and theoretician who’s horrified by the inhumanity of contemporary architecture and has spent his life trying to define principles that … More ...
Another fruit of Vatican II: Catholics who have come of age since then are without sin, or at least don’t think they have anything much to confess. After 40 years of the new springtime in the Church, 42% of Catholics born before 1943 still go to confession at least yearly. Only half as many of … More ...
![[Growing Proportion Outside Christianity]](https://antitechnocrat.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/outsiders.jpg)
Here’s another discussion of social trends related to Christianity, this one relating to the themes about which opposition to Christianity seems to be crystallizing: A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration.
From the statistics presented it appears that the long-term trend toward explicit abandonment of Christianity is continuing, with self-described non-Christians now constituting … More ...
I’ve been talking a lot about contemplation—what it is, why it’s needed, and why it’s at odds with the modern spirit. I should note down a few thoughts on what happens if you don’t have it.
To get rid of contemplation is radically to subordinate truth to action, word to deed. That tendency has developed … More ...
Some time ago J. Bottum, now editor of First Things, published a sort of hit piece on T. S. Eliot, What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed, that I just ran into going through some old correspondence.
It’s not clear just what claim Bottum is making in the piece, for example when he says “I … More ...
Truth and beauty enable us to place and orient ourselves in a world that is larger and more full of things that are worthwhile and interesting than the closed system of resources, desires, technology and formal logic that modern thought presents. That’s why contemplation is basic to the good life.
That kind of statement sounds … More ...
