Introduction

In the four books, there are many kinds of facts that have been introduced, and there are a few more still to come in the remaining chapters. By themselves these many kinds of facts are multifarious. They touch different subjects, and different practical issues, different theoretical issues.

My purpose, of course, in all this, is to help people make a better architecture: a more living architecture, that is good for the surface of the Earth, good for people. My assumption is that many of the ideas, facts, and observations I have put before the reader, are potentially helpful in this regard. They have the power to help people do a better job, and to approach more closely the goal of reaching harmony, in the large and in the small, on the surface of Earth.

But I know very well, from my own experience, that it is hard to use the multitude of facts, ideas and concepts, so long as they remain disconnected, fragmentary things that can be understood only one at a time. In my experience, one does not fully reach the stage of being able to use this material effectively, until one also understands the details as part of a coherent, larger picture. Only then, does one have sufficient grasp of the whole, the motivation, the mental ability to work with these complex ideas most effectively — when one understands them as part of one, coherent, sensible picture, in which each thing makes sense in relation to every other. Without such a unified coherence in one’s understanding, one cannot put the material to sufficiently good use.

I therefore aim, in this last book of the four, to establish a single and coherent view, in which all these ideas make sense together, and are visible, perceivable, as part of a single whole.

To help the reader arrive at such a state, where all the details make sense together, I shall, in the next few pages, begin to arrange the assorted facts that have appeared along the way, and show how one may infer from them, the existence of a larger picture, one which is capable, of providing a vehicle that allows the artist to act with understanding, and in which acts of building, acts of planning, are coherent within a larger framework, so that it all makes sense.

(Page 135-136)