Human culture as a part of physics
The process of defining a good pattern language, is not only related to culture but to wholeness, and culture in relation to wholeness, is not merely social but a part of physics. […]
Living structure comes about only from the evolution of wholeness through structure-preserving transformations. For consistency, then, the definition of patterns, itself, as an activity, is also either structure-preserving or not, since this will be the basis of our ability to make good patterns — all this in the hope that we can then strive to make sure that our efforts to define new and better pattern languages are, indeed, structure-preserving.
Culture itself, and the wholeness which culture induces in the world, is as physical as the rest of wholeness. Only if we have a glimpse, at least, of that idea, will we be able, with all our energy, to focus on the problem of defining patterns which are indeed structure-preserving to present-day culture, yet searching, pointing towards, some new culture — and that the culture-wholeness system, too, can be considered as more alive, or less, so that the patterns we define contribute to the creation of a living world.
Above all, the place is now different because its wholeness is now different. It does not merely seem different, or have a different human picture of it. It is different. Mathematically, it is a different thing.
If, then, we seek to allow the world to unfold, thus creating life, it is this, the subtle, modified wholeness, affected as it is by culture, which must then unfold truthfully, to produce a living thing. The wholeness is, in large part, defined by the culture of that moment.
The proper unfolding of wholeness is both an unfolding of space from the culture which exists, and an unfolding of a new (future) culture from the culture of the present.
And all this is to be defined by the pattern language which reflects the inner needs and inner character, of the human and physical situation.
#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/13 Patterns#