Alasdiar wrote:
> > I would take the purpose of syntax to be closer to "understanding how
> > societies function, reproduce and transform, and understanding the
> > role played by the spatial environment in that."
>
> "Understanding how societies function, reproduce and transform"?
>
> Surely "understanding the role played by the spatial environment in how
> societies function, reproduce and transform"?
>
> I think Alan's next para gets to the heart of the subject, but surely it
> is answering the second statement and not the first? --- a genuine
> question, is the bigger question within the realm of syntax?
Well, I stick by my first statement. Understanding the way that society
functions by only looking at the effects that pass through some form of
spatial mechanism would be partial in the extreme - and we might rightly be
accused of some form of environmental determinism if we proposed that. The
Social Logic proposes, not that space determines everything about society,
but that both space and transpace are involved. In this it restores the
balance to the discussion in sociology where the main focus has been on the
transpatial dimensions of society (perhaps because of the lack of tools and
concepts for dealing with society's spatial face).
>
> Playing devil's advocate, we might be pedantic and claim that spatial
> relations can only be discovered through movement... I'm also thinking
> building big is context dependent and can only determined by spatial
> relations to other built forms or oneself...
I think movement is of course important - we percieve from where we are and
perceptions change as we move - but we also _concieve_ of our environment
and can imagine what places are like from another persons point of view or
another location - (perhaps without moving - though one could argue that
this imagination is developed through previous experience involving
movement). Think of Bentham's Panopticon; its function depends on the
prisoner's ability to concieve of the guard's viewpoint without ever
actually having moved to or occupied the central tower. I suspect that many
aspects of architecture work through our ability to manipulate and
understand the geometry of space in the abstract without actually 'going
there'.
Alan
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