Simplicity and inner calm
One of the 15 fundamental properties.
Simplicity and inner calm is the way the strength of a center depends on its simplicity — on the process of reducing the number of different centers which exist in it, while increasing the strength of these centers to make them weigh more.
Wholeness, life, has a way of being always simple. In most cases, this simplicity shows itself in a geometrical simplicity and purity, which has tangible geometrical form. It is a quality — rather rare in carpets, but more common in other great works of art — which is essential to the completion of the whole. It has to do with a certain slowness, majesty, quietness, which I think of as inner calm.
The quality comes about when everything unnecessary is removed. All centers that are not actively supporting other centers are stripped out, cut out, excised. What is left, when boiled away, is the structure in a state of inner calm. It is essential that the great beauty and intricacy of ornament go only just far enough to bring this calm into being, and not so far that it destroys it.
Simplicity and inner calm is not only to be produced by simplicity. […] It is not true that outward simplicity creates inner calm; it is only inner simplicity, true simplicity of heart, which creates it.
In a living whole which is correctly made, there is a special simplicity. For example, the thick low wall with a broad top is the most solid, easiest to make, and will last the longest. When the main lines of the building are drawn simply, they will tend to give big reference to a few big things: the sun, the view, the slope. The simplicity of this response allows a deeper relationship between the person and the landscape to form; and thus creates more nourishing conditions.
Seems closely related to The void.
In nature
Simplicity and inner calm is the Occam’s razor of any natural system: each configuration occurring in nature is the simplest one consistent with its conditions. […] Why nature follows these minimum energy principles is, surprisingly, not entirely clear. However, the principle of least action, […] provides a rather ancient formulation of simplicity and efficiency which approximates the condition in a highly general way.
#book/The Nature of Order/1 The Phenomenon of Life/5 Fifteen fundamental properties#
#book/The Nature of Order/1 The Phenomenon of Life/6 The fifteen properties in nature#