Author's Note
Preface: Towards a New Conception of the Nature of Matter
1. Introduction
2. Background
3. The Personal
4. That Exists In Me, and Before Me, and After Me
5. Changes in Our Idea of Matter
Part One
We stand face to face with art. Can we make the eternal, simple thing, that belongs utterly to the world, and that preserves, sustains, extends, the beauty of the world?
Is this truly possible? Can it be done, in our world of trucks, freeways, computers, and prefabricated furniture and prefabricated drinks?
Throughout Books 1, 2 and 3, I have presented a veriety of propositions about living structure. They are results of observation. Many of then rely, explicitly, on unusual methods of observation. Many are based on feeling. They are capable of teaching us a new attitude towards the art of buildings. They are capable, in principle, of transforming our physical world for the better.
But, powerful and effective as these methods are, they are likely to be ignored or rejected by the reader so long as they are understood within a mechanistic world-view. A person who adheres to classical 19th - or 20th-century beliefs about the nature of matter, will not be able, fully, to accept the revisions in building practice that I have proposed, because the revisions will remain, for that person, too disturbingly inconsistent with the picture of the world. The old world-picture will constantly graw at our attempts to find a wholesome architecture, disturb our attempts, interfere with them - to such an extent that they cannot be understood or used successfully.
Unless our world-picture itself is changed and replace by a new picture, more consistent with the felt reality of life in buildings and in our surroundings, the idea of life in buildings itself (even with all its highly practical revisions in architectural practice) will not be enough to accomplish change.
1. Our Present Picture of the Universe
1. Cosmology
2. The Strength of the Present Scientific World-Picture
3. The Weakness of the Present World-Picture
4. The Needs of Architecture
(CA가 NOO 1~3권 전체에 대해 요약하는 내용)
Throughtout =THE NATURE OF ORDER= I have presented a variety of propositions about living structure. All these propositions are, in one sense or another, results of observation. I have presented observations about the degree of life in things -- even in buildings, even in concrete and brick and wood -- and the surprising way this varies. I have presented comments about the nature of wholeness in the world, and its dependence on centers. I have presented definitions of geometric properties, correlated with degree of life -- which seem pervasive in buildings and artifacts and in many parts of nature.
I have tried to show how to make things, in our time, which are truly beautiful. I have presented conclusions about the impact of human process and procedural sequence on the evolution of coherent living structure. I have presented examples -- many detailed examples -- of harmonious process and its impact on planning of buildings, structure of buildings, on the detailed geometry of buildings and the way a building is constructed from material. I have presented rather surprising facts about the apparent correlation of the mirror of the self test with observed life in thousands of centers. I have presented observations about the way that human feeling seems to correlate with life in material systems.
The ideas I have brought forward -- some solid, some more tentative -- are in many ways unlike the ideas that as common in our daily experience of science and technology. Many of them rely, explicitly, on unusal methods of observation. Many are based on feeling. They are capable of teaching us a new attitude towards the art of building. They are capable, in principle, of transforming our physical world for the better.
5. Scientific Efforts to Build an Improved World-Picture
The personal, the existence of felt "self" in the universe, the presence of consciousness, and the vital relation between self and matter -- none of these have entered the picture yet, in a practical or scientifically workable way. In that sense the world picture, even as modified, still deals only with the inert -- albeit as a whole. The most fundamental problem with the mechanistic world picture has still not -- yet -- been solved.
Whitehead's rift remains.
6. The Continuing Lack of a Unifying Cosmology
7. Ten Tacit Assumptions Which Underlie Our Present Picture of the Universe
8. Inspiration for a Future Physics
9. The Confrontation of Art and Science
10. A Fusion of Self and Matter
2. Clues From the History of Art
1. Introduction
2. An Observation
3. Relatedness
4. A Possible Explanation
5. A Connection to the Self
6. What of Out Modern Works?
7. More on the Problem of our Era
8. The Black Plater
9. Footnote
3. The Existence of an "I"
1. A Dewdrop
2. Relatedness
3. The Mirror-of-the-Self Experiments
4. The Real Relatedness Existing Underneath the Skin
5. The Ancient and Eternal Truth of the Relatedness
6. The Numinous Experience
7. True Meaning of Relatedness
8. A Jump to Speaking About the Existence of an "I"
9. An Experiment to Determine the Extension of the I
10. The I of Our Experience Originating with the I in Things
11. A Hypothesis
12. Mobilizing the Storm
4. The Ten Thousand Beings
1. Introduction
2. Consider the Possibility of Viewing All Living Centers as Being
3. The Jewel Net of Indra
4. What it Means for a Center to be Being-Like
5. A Corner of a Farmer's Field
6. A Shipyard
7. Looking at Chartres
8. Each Living Center is a Being
9. Pure Unity
10. The Fundamental Process
11. The Difficulty of the Task
12. Innocence
13. The Vision of Matisse and Bonnard
14. In Our Own Era
15. A New Vision of Building: Making Living Structure in Our Brutal World
16. The Life of the Environment
5. The Practical Matter of Forging a Living Center
1. Intensifying Shape
2. Unity Achieved in a Great Blossom
3. Emergence of a "Being" From The Field of Centers
4. Beings in Arches, Spaces, and Columns: The Example of West Dean
5. Emergence of the Arches
6. Detailed Design of the Structural Columns
7. A Wall
8. Catching a Being in Color
9. The Haunting Melody
Mid-Book Appendix: Recapitulation of the Argument
1. Introduction
2. The Possibility of a Coherent Verifiable Theory
3. The Argument from Verifiable Details
4. The Argument From Coherence
Part Two
What I have presented in these four books is intended to become a part of a new science - a first sketch of a new kind of scientific theory.
Since the creation of a work of building must always be, at root, creation of living structure, I have built to the best of my ability a picture of living structure and of the processes that can generate living structure. The picture is sifficient, I belive, for working architects to carry in our minds, a vision of our task.
But this picture necessarily touches physics. The existence of living structure, as I have defined it, requires modifications in our physical picture of the world, not only in the picture which we have of architecture. And, in the most subtle phases of this work, we are forced - I believe - by the arguments presented in Book 4, to go still further. It is not enough merely to have a picture of living structure, but necessary, also, to recognize that there is something ineffable, a mystical core in things, that is deeply related to our own individual self, and that THIS -- not something else -- is the true both of matter and of architecture. That, too, must find expression.
6. The Blazing One
The Unity that Speaks of I
1. The Faintly Glowing Quality which Can be Seen in a Thing Which has Life
2. Psychological Explanation
3. Possible Existence of a Single Underlying Substance
4. The Blazing one
5. What, Then, Is a Center?
6. Though a Strange Model, It Provides a Viable Explanation
7. Which I-Hypothesis is True?
8. A Non-Material View of Matter
7. Color and Inner Light
1. Introduction: A Direct Glimpse of the I
2. Color as an Essential Feature of Reality
3. Inner Light
4. The Unfolding Which Produces Inner Light
5. The Eleven Color Properties
6. Hierarchy of Colors (Levels of Scale)
7. Colors Create Light Together (Positive Space, Alternative Repetition)
8. Contrast of Dark and Light (Contrast)
9. Mutual Embedding (Deep Interlock and Ambiguity)
10. Sequence of Linked Color Pairs (Gradients and the Void)
11. Boundaries and Hairlines (Boundaries)
12. Families of Color (Echoes)
13. Color Variation (Roughness)
14. Intensity and Clarity of Individual Colors (Strong Centers, Good Shape)
15. Subdues Brilliance (Inner Calm and Not-Separatedness)
16. Color Depends on Geometry (Strong Centers, Local Symmetries)
17. Color and the Field of Centers
18. Inner Light as a Glimpse of the I Which Lies Behind the Field of Centers
19. The Hint of a Transcendent Unity
20. Transcendent Wholeness as a Kind of Light
21. Conclusion
8. The Goal of Tears
1. Why Unity and Sadness are Connected
2. Sadness
3. Getting Sadness in the Flesh of the Building
4. Sadness of Color and Geometry
5. Unity and Sadness in a Group of Buildings
6. Unity and Sadness of Life in a Back yard
7. The Ground
8. Concluding Section
9. Making Wholeness Heals the Maker
1. Introduction
2. The Impact of Making Beauty on the Maker's Life
3. The Healing Process
4. Making Wholeness Heals the Maker
5. Life Made Creates Life in the Maker
6. The Source of the Healing Effect
7. Human Growth: The Movement of the Self Towards its Origin
8. Towards Full Knowledge of the Self Which Can Arise in Us
9. Drawing Sadness from Your Most Vulnerable Self
10. Do Not Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls
10. Pleasing Yourself
1. Introduction
2. Recaptulation of Books 1 to 4 as "Pleasing Yourself"
3. Veronica's blue Chair
4. The Heart-Stopping Quality
5. The Thought Police
6. Not Pleasing Yourself
7. A Group of Architecture Students Who Were Not Pleasing Themselves
8. A Mexicali Story About the Thought Police
9. Pleasing Yourself
10. The Effort it Took to Get the Stark Geometry of West Dean to a State Where it Really Pleases Me
11. Emil Nolde's Sunset and Paul Gauguin's Cow
12. A Significantly Large Structure
13. Being Modern and Being True
14. The Childlike
15. There is Nothing Greater
16. Pure Innocence and Deep Order the Message of St. Francis
11. The Face of God
1. This is God
2. Spirit Made Manifest
3. The Practical Results of This Knowledge
4. A Necessary State of Mind
5. The World Beyond a Given Thing
6. Not-Separatedness
7. Making a Gift for God
8. The Face of God
Conclusion to the Four Books
A Modified Picture of the Universe
1. Introduction
2. The Nature of Space and Matter
3. Wholeness as a Physical Structure in the Universe
4. Consciousness as a Physical Feature of the Universe
5. A Modified Physics
6. Summary of the Modified Physics
7. A New Picture of the World
8. A Physical Basis for Religious Awe
9. Essential Awe
Epilogue: Empirical Certainty and Enduring Doubt
1. An Extension of the Scientific Idea of What Can be Known
2. A New Method of Observation at the Core of the World-Picture