Operational Determination: Math in buildings and math statements about them

Authors

  • Staale Sinding-Larsen Professor Emeritus Staale Sinding-Larsen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/emco.v2i1.1484

Abstract


For the question of relations between architecture, or more generally, design, and math, there seems to be two schools. As a great light on Roman buildings told me, Borromini’s architecture has nothing to do with math. On the other hand, for some of us, it is hard to see how you can bypass the issue; especially if you look at the field as something more than just numerical calculation. One might, as Giordano Bruno did, argue in terms of interrelated magnitudes (SL, Patterns and Programs, 1.4) without codifying anything in numerical or any other formal math format. The main point in the present discussion is that, while architecture and design taken as whole is at least physically attestable, math does not appear always as numbers and on paper or on the machine, but may be an active configuration in the murky depths usually referred to as our mind, without being necessarily explicitly recorded.

References

Baumgartner, P., and Payr, S., Speaking minds. Interviews with twenty eminent cognitive scientists, Princeton (NJ), 1996.

Benjafield, J. G., Cognition, Englewood Cliffs (NJ) 1992..

Bridgman, P., The operational character of scientific concepts, 57 - 69, in Boyd, R., Gasper, Ph., and Trout, J. D., The philosophy of science, Cambridge (MA), 1991.

Callero, P. L., Toward a sociology of cognition, in Howard, J. A., and Callero, P. L. (eds), The self-society dynamic, Cambridge 1991, 43 - 54.

Davis, G. G., and Olson, M. H., Management information systems. Conceptual foundations, 2 ed., New York 1985; paperback 1996.

Downs, R. M., Personal constructions of personal construct theory, in Moore and Gollege, Environmental knowing, pp. 72 - 87.

Eriksen, R. T, Topografia e prospettiva: architettura retorica, Memorie /Acc.Naz. di Modena, 2004, 541560.

Eriksen, R. T, Alberti, Manetti, and Quattrocento aesthetics, ed. Eriksen and Tschudi, Ashes to ashes, Art in Rome between humanism and maniera, Rome 2006.

Eves, H., Foundations and fundamental concepts of mathematics, 3rd ed., Mineola (NY), 1990.

Ganter, B., and Wille, R., Formal concept analysis. Mathematical foundations, Berlin 1999.

Geen, R. G., Human motivation. A social psychological approach, Belmont (CA) 1995.

Gregory, R. L., Mind in Science. A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics, Harmondsworth, 1984 (originally London 1981, reprint 1988).

Grünbaum, B, and Shephard, G. C., Tilings and patterns, New York 1987.

Heisenberg, W., Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik, Munich 1969.

Horgan, J., The Undiscovered Mind. How the human brain defies replication, medication, and explanation, New York 1999.

Inmon, W. H., Data architecture. The information paradgm, Wellesley (MA, 1992.

Jakonbsen, K. (ed)., Modern design princiles, Trondheim 1988.

Kitcher, Ph., The nature of mathematical knwledge, New York 1984.

Lakoff, G., and Núñez, R. E., Where mathematcs come from. How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, New York 2000.

Lord, E. A. and Wilson, C. B., The mathemaical description of shape and form, repr. New York 1986.

Miller, A. I., Imagery in scientific thought, Cambridge (MA) 1986, repr. 1987.

Miller, A. I., Imagery and creativity in Science and art, New York 1996.

Putnam, H. The meaning of meaning, in Mind, language and reality. Cambridge 1975, pp. 223 - 227

Quine, W. V., From a logical point of view, Nine logico-philosohical essays, 2nd. revised ed., Cambridge (MA) 1980.

Radnitzky, G., Contemporary schools of metascience, I, II, Göteborg 1968, reprint 1970.

Simon, H. A., Models of thought, New Haven (CT) 1979.

Simon, H. A., The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd. ed., Cambridge (MA) 1996.

Sinding-Larsen, S., Some finctional and iconographical aspects of the centralized church in the Italian Renaisance, Ist. rom. Nor., Acta, II, 1965, 203 - 252.

Sinding-Larsen, S., A tale of two cities. Florentine and Roman visual context for fifteenth-century palaces, in Institutum romanum Norvegiae, Acta, Vol.VI, 1975, pp. 163 - 212.

Sinding-Larsern, S., The Laurenziana vestibule as a functional solution, Ist. rom. Nor., Acta,VIII, 1978, pp. 213 - 222. Reprint in Wallace, William E, Michelangelo. Selected scholarship, New York 1998

Sinding-Larsen, S., The burden of the ceremony master. Image and action in San Marco, Venice, and an Islamic mosque, Rome 2000. Review by Ruth Simon/ Schilling, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=91381022723569.

Sinding-Larsen, S., Patterns and programs in premodern Rome, Shape, form and message systems: an open-source approach = http://ntnu.no/bht/arkitekturhistorie, NTNU publication, 2010.

Sinding-Larsen, S., Working with pictures in elaborated systems, in Jarits, G. (ed.), Image, ritual and daily life,, Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Austrian Academy of Sciences, forthcoming.

Torricelli, Evangelista, Opera geometrica Evangelistae Torricelli, Florence 1644. I, i. 223ff.: De dimensione cochleae .

Winograd, T. (ed.), Bringing design to software, Boston (MA) 1996, eleven printings up to 2006.

Wittgenstein, L., Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, Werksausgabe Band 6, ed. Anscombe, Rhees and Von Wright, Frankfurt a/M 1984.

Downloads

Published

2018-02-25

How to Cite

Sinding-Larsen, S. “Operational Determination: Math in Buildings and Math Statements about Them”. Early Modern Culture Online, vol. 2, no. 1, Feb. 2018, doi:10.15845/emco.v2i1.1484.

Issue

Section

Articles