Determining the Axis: Meaning, Function, Sense

Kurt Espersen-Peters

1. Meaning, Function, Sense

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, there have been desperate attempts to infuse architecture with some semblance of ontological meaning. The discipline has endured the concatenation of nostalgic mimesis in its attempt to recover a forlorned remembrance of familiarity but this subsequently provoked a retreat into esoteric discourse which sought to revitalize the built environment through its own teleological agenda. There has been a preference for symbolic quotation over a continuum of existential investment but this is as a symptom of a larger infiltration that subverts experiential interpretation. The ambiguousness of architecture's role in contemporary society is partly due to the sincerity of its social responsibility. Architecture functions as a mirror of society, for it reflects - as well as projects - the conditions, hopes and goals of the people. If there exists a misdirection of meaning in architecture, it need not necessarily lie with the praxis directly but as a consequence of a human condition irrevocably obsessed with assigning every aspect of the world an instrumental value. Trying to find meaning within a closed system leads to a hermetic epistemology, thus deriving truth only from what the structure can prove. As rational structures and systems become ingrained in our collective conscience, the proportionate need for a deeper, transcendental meaning invariably arises.

Meaning in architecture is tied to the human body and mind. Through the senses, the external world becomes intimate to the knower. Through the mind, this intimacy is given an order: a framework that all aspects of nature, or phenomena, can fit into. A primacy of sensation promotes an interpretation of experience through the senses which in turn forge propositions.1 From this, a contextually-dependent confluence of relationships arises. Meaning is derived by how these phenomena relate and are cultivated in regards to their own inherent potential.2 Phenomena that are assigned a standardized set of rational parameters from which they can be known evolve into structures and systems.

In attempting to comprehend the world of the unknown, there must be structure and order. Without theories of how propositions work, nature is just chaos. A structure endeavours to evaluate, explain and organize every experience possible, whether it is intellectual or physical, to inform what the whole of reality is by providing beliefs, judgements, morals, ethics and values.3 Structure guides methodologies and ideologies. Establishing a universally recognized framework through the extraction and abstraction of propositions from their authentic realization legitimizes phenomena and thus dictates how it shall be known. As if through some self-imposed apotheosis, these taxonomies have emerged as the dominant mode of knowledge in our contemporary society. These complex systems possess the inherent potential to remove every element of mystery or unexpected possibility in the natural world. As the course of history has also proven, these are the realms where poetry, art and imagination are to be found. But not even these realms are exempt from systematic inference. Even the natural world requires some foundation for comprehension. So where does one epistemology stop and the other begin?

Rational systems achieved a particular level of authority through the implementation of mathematics and logic. These functions evolved into systems, such as physics and geometry, that turned every aspect of nature into a semantic and with them, the ability to predict trajectories, distances and probabilities with extreme precision and reliability. This provides a sense of security in a chaotic world, since everything becomes knowable, and thus familiar. Beyond the system, the transcendental perspective engages what rationalism cannot question: the innate and eternal ontological dimension of human existence. Retaining the capacity to posit this question is paramount if there is to be a continuation of any further existential investigations. But what are the consequences of a total rationalization of our world? To uncover this, we should look at how the human mind comes to know the external - and internal - world.

Deriving Meaning

The human body is a mediator of sensations, experiences and propositions. Somehow, these experiences must be extrapolated into some form of meaning, but meaning, to be meaningful, must be contextual. To establish relevancy, things must be compared and contrasted through some judicial point of view: "the body articulates the world (and) at the same time the body is articulated by the world. When I perceive the concrete to be something cold and hard, I recognize the body as something warm and soft."4 In a rational system, there is a distinction between the subject (the knower) and the object (the known). The ability to comprehend and communicate sensations articulated through the human body constitutes the subjective position.5 The objective position concerns the phenomena being interpreted. The nature of phenomena (its extrapolation of the natural world) and the causal structure of reality (rationalism) produce a psychological model of theorization, explanation and rules that govern sensory experiences and their meaning. It is essential to reveal how experience is transformed into a communicable form through the psychological model since it exists as the basis for how our collective contemporary society values and interprets the propositions around it. Rational systems adequately document the ontic characters of a proposition but their authority diminishes when transcribing their ontological character.

Knowing: The Psychological Investment

How do we come to know things? This simple statement contains two conditions that have perplexed any one who has speculated about the nature of the human condition: the essence of knowing and the essence of the thing. The rational model takes this statement and seeks to assign qualitative attributes. To know is to infer defining features and substantive conditions to an entity or a thing that exists in the field of human perception. A thing is a substance or entity that is in itself, identifiable and separate from other substances.6 This knowing about things accumulates in an elementary way as knowledge, which refers to the qualities and properties of a proposition and how they become manifest in human cognition. Knowledge has generally begun and ended with experience. The individual's capacity to experience exists as a foundation to construct a psychological taxonomy from which subsequent epistemologies either accept or deny the extent of experiential influence, but irregardless, there can be little debate that experience does exist.7

The tenets of epistemology react to the function of experience through two distinct methodologies: a) the acquired, or learned, knowledge of interpreting experience; and b) the experiential aspect of sense that transcends standardized knowledge. Acquired knowledge seeks to somehow extrapolate experience into a communicable form, something that has a common ground and is universally understood and/or accepted. In the realm of psychology, this would be defined as signs and symbols. Signs and symbols exist as abstractions of an actual experience and/or proposition. They endeavour to possess relevancy to someone or a group of conditioned participants about a particular thing. Thus, the intent of any sign/symbol-dependent mechanic is to reduce sensations to tangible expressions so the experience and/or proposition can be indicated to a broader audience rather than remain as an isolated experience of the individual. But everyone must speak the same language to communicate intention or infer description. For instance, the term "cat", referring to a four-legged animal with soft fur and a tail, would not be potent if one participant assumed that the semantic referred to an expression of fear made when one feels threatened. Thus, meaning must possess context, and for the semantic to have relevancy, it must possess a shared frame of reference.

Both rational and existential models share this trait. In the human mind, the generation of a symbol-library and a symbol-vocabulary is a uniquely obsessive human activity. Our need for expression is also our innate need for definition and hence security about the unknown for the knowable is no longer threatening. What this action does is remove unexpected possibilities in the natural world because standardized knowledge does not encourage personal interpretation. The use of signs and symbols imbued with cultural significance in architecture revealed an agenda to establish and standardize a prescriptive architectural language. Value-ladened symbols sought to evoke the familiar but instead reduced architectural creation to a semantic game of arranging typological forms.

Autonomy of Structure

There are organized structures in existence, such as psychology, physics, and geometry, that autonomously exist as acquired knowledge and have no direct sense-derivations. These hypotheses attempt to interpret sense-data and formulate structures and laws that govern how we can know such experiences. They shape how we think and see things in the mind and project them into the world; they direct and orient the types of questions we are capable of asking about a proposition and the capacity with which to know it. The invention of simple functions, such as counting apples, meant implementing a system that did not question the ontological dimension of the object, just its ontic character. The essence of what was being accounted for becomes irrelevant since the function only requires an object with an instrumental value to direct its mechanics. Once the function is in place, it no longer requires the initial proposition or experience to operate. Originally the function required a centre to determine the parameters of its inquiry, but the centre also served "not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure, but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of the structure."8 The centre serves as the original impetus for the function. The centre is what governs the structure but is not part of its matrix and no longer requires it once the system reaches totality: "the centre is at the centre of the totality, and yet, since the centre does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its centre elsewhere. The centre is not the centre."9

Autonomous structures devoid of a locus can now project the infinite possibilities of a proposition without directly referring to it. We no longer need the actual apple present to discuss its characteristics. This can lead to meaning that is groundless for how can it convey experience when the methodology does not even require the entity as it is, ontologically, in the world for comprehension?10 Without a centre, the structure depends on its own function for meaning and becomes a further abstraction from a natural model. All that exists is structure and function: form without meaning. It is like a spinning top that has lost its stability, its aberrant trajectory results from the inertia of its own inherent dynamic. Where the axis upon which it once rotated was its locus, it is no longer required for orientation.11 This is a distinct difference between rational meaning and existential meaning. Rationality requires the system itself as a source of meaning whereas existentiality uses the system as a method of extrapolating some semblance of the natural world.

2. The Consequences of Function: A Polemic

Our current definition of the world revolves around a human existence that searches for relevancy by defining their surroundings to a comfortable degree. The mechanics of the structure is one method from which this can be accomplished for it seeks to relay information that one individual has experienced to another individual and to one's own self. Our only communicative conception of the world rests in our perceptual and conceptual faculties, which is transfigured into a system of interpretation and standardization: our current version of how the world works. But what reason do we have to think that this conception holds truth, that it corresponds to the world as the world is in itself?

Descriptive systems are a foil to the human spirit for they cannot adequately express the sensations evolving from the soul. All words are metaphors in relation to experiential events because words can only refer to something in a collective conscience, providing only a cursory allusion. Yet humanity tries to express that which defies description. This possesses an inherent paradox because no two individuals could ever possess the same experiential interpretation of a word or an event. Each and every individual possesses a pedigree of experience that culminates at every moment in their life to define the essence of their being. Here, individuality is clearly expressed. Despite this, we somehow manage to function within a common and shared system of communication, morals, ethics and knowledge. We require a system to adequately express our experiences but have we become conditioned to think and convey feelings according to a set of rigid parameters at the expense of transcendental experiences? To regain some semblance of the existential condition, we must suspend the structurality and functionality of the rational system. With it properly contained, we might begin to see the world anew again.

Structure seems incapable of transcending the parameters of the current human condition to convey something that exists outside of its scope of vision. It is an invented and biased methodology of communication for it cannot express anything other than what its matrix is designed for: expressing a hermetic and closed world. Is everything that exists outside of its scope immaterial or reduced to a mere shadow of what it once was?12 The preference of using cursory systems to define, literally, undefinable circumstances belies the purpose of experience since it is no longer sensation but prescriptive direction. Why should one use ancillary systems to express or comprehend any phenomena that can be known in a much more direct manner? The problem is that systematics have become so ingrained in society's collective conscience that we know of no other way to see the world.

An alternative to the rationalist snare is a metaphysical perspective which examines the questions that empirical and positivist methodologies cannot posit: "the knowable is a clearly defined field, governed by the requirement of discursive projectability. Outside this domain is the inexpressible realm of feeling, of formless desires and satisfactions, immediate experience, forever incognito and incommunicado. A philosopher who looks in that direction is, or should be, a mystic; from the ineffable sphere nothing but nonsense can be conveyed, since language, our only possible semantic, will not clothe experiences that elude the discursive form."13 Our continuous rationalization about the meaning of being has pushed humanity to the point of losing touch with how we might have once been in the world, denying the nature of universal co-existence in favour of a hermetic and perpetually indulgent solution: "if there be a world which is not physical, or not in space-time, it may have a structure which we can never hope to express or to know (and) perhaps that is why we know so much physics and so little about anything else."14

Determining the Axis

In architecture, the role of modern thought promoted ideologies that were esoteric and self-indulgent, revealing meaning and relevancy only through their hermetic discipline. The human equation was unwittingly relegated to the position of pure spectator by the logical projection of the rational system that modernism sought to expound, for it possessed an unavoidable destiny to categorize every aspect of nature and reduce it to a standardized form. If this rational model is to adhere to the logic of its own matrix, then every aspect of the natural world will eventually be assigned some type of instrumental value and become knowable, understandable and predictable. Thus the mystery and mystique of the natural world will wane as the codex of discursive form reaches fruition. An architectural position that follows in these footsteps will inevitably suffer the same fate. The limitations of the rational system are evident when compared to an existential view point that seeks to engender contextuality, or the inherent capacity of the individual to extract meaning according to his or her own values.

Ultimately, the systems of determination exist as a construct external to the innate human condition and can only offer a cursory allusion to any experience or proposition. Individual experience of a proposition should supercede standardized knowledge because it relies on the memory, the imagination and the unconscious capacity of the individual participant to generate significant meaning.15 There is still an adherence to a system, albeit one that does not rely on discursive form but one that depends on the individual's own sensations to comprehend experience. Instead of a reliance upon discursive methodologies, a reliance on an individual interpretation of experience can unveil sensations in a much more direct manner. It is paramount to recognize that underneath any descriptive methodology or system lies the potential for a complete abstraction of reality. Particular systems do not require a logos for definition while others do. The question remains whether experience and the proposition still possess relevancy as the centre of any system: "in the absence of a centre or origin, everything becomes discourse."16 As a society, we must recognize that every individual has the choice as to which system generates their epistemological and experiential grounds and each individual can still determine around which axis their system of beliefs will rotate.

Architecture is an art form with peculiar conditions and allegiances and thus must be sincere to society. It will forever be tied to society and thus forever to that orientation and direction. Even today, architecture still possesses the innate characteristics of space and scale that distinguishes architecture from other art forms, but in an era where credibility is only bestowed upon that which can be justified, many of these characteristics have disappeared behind a veil of functionalism and symbolic mimesis. If architecture mimics the course that contemporary society is oriented towards, then the human body and mind will continue to exist as a design implement, possessing nothing more than instrumental value. This will negate human perception and experience in favour of a perceived norm of what the human condition should be rather than what it actually is. To recover a sense of familiarity in architecture, we, as a society, must first recover some semblance of our selves.

Notes

1 Steven J. Wagner, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Ed. Robert Audi. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.658.

A proposition is an abstract object said to be that to which a person is related by a belief, desire or other psychological attitude.

2 Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" in Basic Writings. Ed. David F. Krell. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), p.314-5, p.317.

Heidegger speaks of a bringing-forth, a presencing (Anwesen), that is the fundamental condition for an entity, either natural or synthetic, to appear. This revealing (aletheia) permits an entity to be known in accordance with its own unique and inherent characteristics and potential.

3 James Burke, "Worlds Without End" The Day The Universe Changed. (BBC Production, 1992)

Burke suggests that all structures that attempt to reconcile nature in an abstract methodology are subject to paradigmatic shifts when one piece of information or evidence that doesn't fit the current structure.

4 Tadao Ando, "Shintai and Space." in Tadao Ando: Complete Works. Ed. Francesco Dal Co. (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), p.253.

Ando elucidates architectural space as being heterogeneous: possessing directionality and corporeal density. The human body becomes a point of departure to experience the world but not as a dualistic being but symbiotically with the surroundings: "the world articulated by the body is a vivid, lived-in space." (p.253)

5 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgement. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p.77.

Objects and acts require a site from which to be understood. Husserl refers to this site of relation of all the different acts and objects the transcendental ego, or pure consciousness.

6 Aristotle, Categories. Ed. Robert M. Hutchins. (London: William Benton Publishers, 1952), p.6.

Aristotle's definition of substance (ousia) is divided into primary and secondary conditions. Primary substance is distinguished from the accidental (accident being defined as what may or may not belong to a subject) categories by the fact that every accident is present in a substance and, therefore, cannot exist without a substance in which to adhere.

7 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason Ed. Vasilis Politis. (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1991), p.30.

Kant's Critique opens with the statement "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt."

8 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1978), p.278.

Derrida's attempt to reveal an alternative methodology to Western metaphysics led him to examine the relationships between propositions as being meaningful as opposed to the propositions themselves. Derrida as well as Heidegger both rightly assumed that their investigations were mired in a logocentric position: the methods, systems and arguments were in fact the spawn of the logocentric position each sought to undermine. Therefore it is impossible to achieve enough distance to objectively criticize the system.

9 Ibid, p.279.

10 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p.65.

The term entity refers to a being with ontic characteristics that define or determine them but also possessing the character of being (sein), their ontological characteristics. For every entity to be recognized, it must be allowed to develop according to its own inherent potential.

11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty. Ed. G.E.M. Anscombe & G.H. von Wright. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969), p.22e.

Wittgenstein alludes to the structurality of the structure as being something that can be self-sufficient and autonomous from any centre, or logos: "I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility. (152)"

12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1974), p.74.

The inevitability of formal and rational models to exclude any transcendental expression is surmized by Wittgenstein in his concluding remark: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. (7)"

13 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 3rd Edition. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p.86.

14 Bertrand Russell, Philosophy. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1927), p.265.

15 Juhani Pallasmaa, "The Geometry of Feeling: A Look at the Phenomenology of Architecture" in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995. Ed. Kate Nesbitt. (Boston: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), p.449.

"The artistic dimension of a work of art does not lie in the actual physical thing; it exists only in the consciousness of the person experiencing it. Thus analysis of a work of art is at its most genuine introspection by the consciousness subjected to it. Its meaning lies not in the forms, but in the images transmitted by the forms and the emotional force that they carry. Form only affects through what it represents." The phenomenological perspective reflects a preference for solipsism in regards to experience and although the existence of the real world is not denied, its meaning should be clarified and expounded.

16 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1978), p.279.

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[Kurt Espersen-Peters is a fourth year student in the Architecture Program at the University of Calgary.]