Cosmology

We cannot form a complete picture of the nature of architecture without conceptions that deal with life and self. We need, for our time, a picture which allows us to form a connection, a relatedness with the whole. But the mechanistic scientific world picture we have inherited, as it stands is not capable of this.

It is hardly possible to take the art of building seriously, as a profound task, if what we do when we design a building is merely to aggregate meaningless lumps of matter. Yet that is, within our present world-picture, what we are doing when we design, or build. Within the present scientific picture, if we ask, What it is all for? Th only answer that comes back is, It is for nothing. Within this picture, if we ask, What is the point? The only scientific answer that comes back is, There is no point.

I shall begin, therefore, by examining the great strength and beauty of the scientific world-picture, trying to find a crack where we may inject some new structure that endows the whole with meaning. That cannot be done by wiping away the science and technology we have gained. They are too beautiful, too powerful. We have learned too much from them, and gained too much. But somehow, the abstract mechanism-inspired world-picture must be modified, transformed, in such a way that it becomes something that has meaning for all of us.

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