Web of Nature

"No pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it. This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)
A Pattern Language

Leaves, Color, Wholeness

"When we understand what order is,  I believe we shall better understand what matter is and then what the universe itself is ... Learning to see … wholeness … not muddled or contaminated by words and concepts, is extremely difficult, but it is possible to learn …When we see wholeness as it is, we recognize that [its] seeming parts … are merely arbitrary fragments which our minds have been directed to, because we happen to have words for them. If we open our eyes wide, and look at the scene without cognitive prejudice, we see something quite different ... geometric wholeness is not merely beautiful in itself as an accompaniment to the beautiful color. It is essential, necessary, for the release of light. Color, far from being an incidental attribute of things, is fundamental to the living structure of wholeness. Inner light is not merely a phenomenon, but the character of wholeness when it ‘melts.’"

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)

Plenum Model of the Ground

"The proposal I am making here - that the I which lies behind or inside all matter is an underlying substance, or 'original substance' underlying all matter - partially reunites us, part of the way, not all the way, towards a world of spirit. It does not make a separation between spirit and matter. Rather it asserts and insists that matter is not a purely mechanical material, but rather a spirit-like, Self-like substance, a material grounded in I, hence a different kind of substance from the space-time of Descartes and Einstein which were both postulated in the mechanistic tradition.

...

The plenum model of the Ground - the idea that the I is actually real in the universe, not only in the mind - is harder to accept... In this view we see the same ground - but we now think of it as a great thing in the universe, far beyond ourselves, haunting, otherworldly, ultimate in its beauty and light. It is reached only when a great work breaks through it."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)
The Nature of Order: Luminous Ground

Geometric Patterns

"Every place is given its
character by certain patterns of
events that keep on happening there.
These patterns of events
are locked in with certain
geometric patterns in the space.
...
"I believe that all centers
that appear in space -
whether they originate in biology,
in physical forces, in pure geometry,
in color - are alike simply in that
 they all animate space.
 It is this animated space that
has its functional effect
 upon the world, that determines
 the way things work, that governs
 the presence of harmony and life.
...
"All space and matter,
organic or inorganic,
has some degree of life in it,
and matter/space is more alive
or less alive according to
its structure and arrangement."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)

Living Centers

"What is the life that we discern in things?"
...

"Each of us has an eternal self—a best self—an “I” that goes beyond what we normally see. This is what allows us to contact the 'living centers' in ourselves, in others, and in spaces that come alive for us. This field of centers, that appears in things, people, events, places shows us our interconnectedness…and can be called God or Spirit manifest. Everything we do and make, then, is a gift to IT. Good things grow and unfold out of our understood wholeness."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - )
The Nature of Order: Luminous Ground

Timeless Way of Building

"...towns and buildings will not be able to become alive, unless they are made by all the people in society, and unless these people share a com­mon pattern language, within which to make these buildings, and unless this common pattern language is alive itself. 

...

The elements of this language are entities called pat­terns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

...

No pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is sup­ported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it. This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of na­ture, as you make it.

...

The Timeless Way of Building says that every society which is alive and whole, will have its own unique and distinct pattern language; and further, that every in­dividual in such a society will have a unique language, shared in part, but which as a totality is unique to the mind of the person who has it. In this sense, in a healthy society there will be as many pattern languages as there are people-even though these languages are shared and similar.

...

Since the language is
in truth a network,

there is no one sequence
which perfectly captures it."

 

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - )
A Pattern Language

Musings on the Creative Process: Left-Brain / Right-Brain Blending

 "It's always seemed like

a big mystery how nature,

seemingly so effortlessly,

manages to produce so much

that seems to us so complex.

Well, I think we found its secret.

It's just sampling what's

out there in the

computational universe."

- Stephen Wolfram (1959 - )

I apologize beforehand for what might seem like a long and bizarre excursion away from photography; but please bear with me as the following musings are very much in the vein of exploring the "creative process" of photography (well, at least, a glimpse of the creative process I've recently been immersed in!). Specifically, those aspects of the creative process that lie at the cusp of traditional left/right brain functions. Leaving aside the reality of such a dichotomy (e.g., see this recent paper), let us posit that left-brain processes focus more on logic and analytic thinking, and that right-brain processes focus on art and intuition more. Of course, all of us continually engage both sides throughout our waking hours, albeit with our own unique rhythms of shifting/combining focus and modulating relative emphasis. In my case, I live in two - usually quite separate - worlds, deliberately broken up into "what I do during my work week" (employed, as I am, as a physicist at a federally funded research & development center) and "what I do during essentially all available off hours" (which, among other things, has resulted in this photography blog and more fun with my cameras, lenses, filters, and tripods than I deserve in the 45+ years I've been doing photography). Occasionally, as I'm about to do here, I combine my two sides; though not always for the better - you, kind reader, can judge whether I've strayed a bit too far in this case.

"Working with mental images activates a different mode
of consciousness which is holistic and intuitive." 
- Henri Bortoft (1938 - 2012)

So many ideas come to mind as I ponder this question: Goethe's Holistic Seeing; Bohm's Implicate Order; and Alexander's (opus on fundamental organizing principles of "life forms") Nature of Order, all come to mind. But I will leave the discussion of these approaches for a later entry. For now, these ideas will have to serve merely as backdrops of my explanation of how I've partly fused my "left-brain/right-brain" activities over the last week or so (I promise to keep it short :). 

At its core, my usual "right brain" approach to photography cannot be simpler: I pick up my camera bag and tripod, head out for a walk to a local park (or just go downstairs to a "studio" I've set up for to experiment with color abstracts), and start shooting. If something catches the eye, I shoot. That's about it. And the less ("left-brain") thinking that is involved, the better (though it sometimes leads to thinking about thinking, which I've written about before). The only important - and almost entirely unconscious - action I take is to choose the time I press the shutter (I've assuming that such minutiae as f-stops, exposure times, filters, and the like are "automatic" and add little to the story I'm trying to tell here). OK, so far, so good.

"So the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others
is implied by its total content: the way in which it
'holds’ all the others enfolded within it." 
- David Bohm (1917 - 1992) 

This is where my several-week-old left-brain machinations come in. While looking over a portfolio of recent abstracts (including those "discovered" in marble and crystals), I ran across a number that fell into the "whole contains other wholes" pictures I described above. I was sitting at the same PC that facilitates both my left-brain (Photoshop) and right-brain (Mathematica) activities, and reflected the same basic type of question I normally reserve for my left-brain: "How can I find the 'best' image?" - meaning one that best satisfies my desire to show "interesting parts" of an image, but in such a way that the whole is still implicitly within sight, "just barely out of reach." I had earlier experimented with breaking up images into thirds and looking for "interesting juxtapositions" (e.g., exchanging the 1st and 2nd panel interchanged, but leaving the 3rd panel fixed). And, while that did lead to some interesting variations, it was also a painstakingly long process. These preliminary experiments were akin to a kind of improvisational play,  wherein I manually dissected each image and created select juxtapositions of interest. Noting that something interesting can actually be found by following this method, my left-brain finally clicked into action.

While the process is still "simple" (relatively speaking), and can - and will - easily be improved upon in coming days and weeks, I wrote a Mathematica function that automatically breaks an image into thirds (i.e., my 3-word alphabet of 'panels' to be used in  constructing new triptychs); applies all possible combinations of (1) leaving the orientation of a given panel unchanged (or as 'original = O'), (2) flipping a panel in the horizontal direction ('HF'), (3) flipping a panel in the vertical direction ('VF'), and (4) rotating a panel 180 deg (i.e., perform a vertical rotation = 'VR'); and assembling the new panels into a triptych with a bit of white space between and on the outside perimeter of the whole image. (90 deg rotations are not allowed, because in order to retain the same aspect ratio, the panels would all need to be square.) The Mathematica function is constrained to not create any triptychs in which the original panel order is left unchanged, since my goal is to find combinations of individually interesting images - in this case, panels - in which the whole, or original image, is only implicit and not directly observable. A bit of counting shows that, with this constraint, there are a total of 320 possible 'panel exchange + rotation/flip' combinations. This is significantly more than I can create by hand, but is easily doable in a few seconds by feeding my Mathematica function a starting image of choice. More specifically (since it is hard to visually digest 320 images at once), I had Mathematica display a smaller array of 16 random triptychs out of the complete set that my right-brain can inspect - and select interesting variants of - "at a glance." 

"No pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the
world only to the extent that is supported by other patterns:
the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the
same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns
which are embedded in it."
- Christopher Alexander (1936 - ) 

Two such arrays are displayed at the top of this post, along with - on the right hand side - one of the images I like best. By design, all of the randomly constructed triptychs share the two most important qualities I am searching for: (1) each of the panels is "interesting" (since this cannot be expected to be true of just any image, the starting image must already be specially selected), and (2) the starting image is visible only implicitly, since the viewer is allowed to see only the juxtaposed panels, not in their original order). As for what makes triptych x more/less interesting than triptych y? That's where the right brain jumps back into the process, as it subjectively selects one out of many - just because; though, because of the way my left-brain constructed the samples from which my right-brain is asked to choose (leaving out the "real" image), the right-brain is faced with - what for me, is - an intoxicating aesthetic tension between parts and an implicit whole. Indeed, the pleasure I get from finding and viewing "interesting images" of this sort are a direct analogue of the creative process by which they are spawned. In the same way as (I've just described) my left-brain helps me sort, dissect, operate-on, and create a multiverse of same-but-different sets of images that my right-brain generated the 'starting set' for (by intuitively capturing the original image) - my right-brain now delights in teasing apart the tension between the parts and wholes of images that my left-brain constructed for me (thus revealing "interesting" sets of images otherwise invisible to my own eye). 

Importantly, at least as far as photography - and aesthetics - are concerned, both sides of this creative process are fueled by search, discovery, and selection. That is, a search for a place and time to take a photograph, discovering an image, and selecting how and when to capture it. The only difference between my usual photography and the (admittedly laborious seeming) process described above is the space over which the search, discovery, and selection is conducted: i.e., a meta-space of images constructed out of images already taken vs. the physical world in which an original set of images is captured. The extra delight (I continue to have as I experiment with left-brain / right-brain blending) is that - at least temporarily - both sides of my brains are actively engaged in pursuit of an unchanging goal: to find "interesting images" :)

Here some additional "discoveries" in my left-brain constructed multiverse of meta-images (with more sure to follow)...

Embedded Patterns

"No pattern is an isolated entity.

Each pattern can exist in the world

only to the extent that is

supported by other patterns:

the larger patterns in

which it is embedded,

the patterns of the same

size that surround it,

and the smaller patterns

which are embedded in it. "

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - )

What is Order?

“What is order? 

We know that everything in

the world around us is governed

by an immense orderliness. 

We experience order

every time we take a walk.

The grass, the sky,

the leaves on the trees,

the flowing water in the river,

the windows in the houses along the street,

all of it is immensely orderly. 

It is this order which makes

us gasp when we take our walk.

It is the changing

arrangement of the sky,

the clouds, the flowers, leaves,

the faces round about

us, the order, the dazzling

geometrical coherence, together

with its meaning in our minds. 

But this geometry which means

so much, which makes us feel

the presence of order so clearly,

we do not have a language for it.”   

- Christopher Alexander

(1936 - )

Entities, Environments, and Patterns

"In an organic environment,

every place is unique,

and the different places also cooperate,

with no parts left over,

to create a global whole;

a whole which can be identified

by everyone who is part of it.

In short, no pattern is

an isolated entity.

Each pattern can exist

in the world only to the extent

that is supported by other patterns:

the larger patterns in which

it is embedded, the patterns of

the same size that surround it,

and the smaller patterns

which are embedded in it."

- Christopher Alexander

(1936 - )

Transcendent Order

"When we say that order is transcendent, we mean to say that somehow, the order makes contact with some other reality, or some other 'something,' which lies outside of and beyond our normal experience. We need a word for this something. It is hard  to find a suitable word, since, by definition, the something is beyond normal experience - and presumably, therefore, outside the range of things which have ordinary names... I use the word 'ground'  to refer to this something.

The ground is imagined to be a pure reality. It is a state of reality, or substance, which is in the universe, but not accessible to normal perception and normal awareness. It is, however, not assumed to be distant. It is generally assumed to be here where we are, and even more real, more authentic, than the reality we normally experience. It is thus supposed to be a state of matter, or state of things, or state of existence, which is more fundamental - and of which one might say that 'the universe is really made of this stuff.' All this is 'the ground.' It is the ground beneath our feet, the ultimate ground of substance on which all things stand.

Color not only establishes wholeness as a single quality, a oneness beyond structure.It begins to establish a connection with this ground. The inner light we experience in the cases of great color seems to penetrate beyond normal experience, reaching through to this ground, showing us this ground, making us feel the ground... the experience of inner light reveals an ultimate world of existence as it really is, perhaps, and shows us a glimpse of a reality which is more profound, more beautiful, than the one we experience every day...[it is the] first direct experience of the I."

- Christopher Alexander

The Nature of Order, Book 4:

Luminous Ground 

Implicate Order, Enfolded Centers

"As a mountain (a whole structure) moves forward in time, old centers are preserved and new centers are generated; centers will always tend to form in such a way as to preserve and enhance previous structure. Beauty will occur without effort in any world where the wholeness is allowed to unfold smoothly and truthfully, without disturbing previously existing centers. Everything becomes a single system and a single way of understanding."

- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

"Because the whole is enfolded in each part, so are all other parts, in some way and to some degree... The more fundamental truth is the truth of internal relatedness - the implicate order... in this order the whole and hence all the other parts are enfolded in each part."

-David Bohm
Physicist
(1917 - 1992

Pattern of Patterns

"What pattern connects
the crab to the lobster
and the orchid to the
primrose and all the four
of them to me?
And me to you? ...
The pattern which connects
is a metapattern.
It is a pattern of patterns."
- Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist
(1904 - 1980)

"A pattern of events
cannot be separated
from the space
where it occurs."
- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

Physics vs Photography: Which is Harder?

George Barr, on his Behind the Lens blog, posted one of those wonderfully thought-provoking (and ultimately unanswerable) questions about the relative "difficulty" (as an activity) of one's day-job (in George's case, being a medical doctor, and in mine a physicist) and fine-art photography. While I couldn't resist leaving George a stream-of-consciousness comment on his own blog, his interesting question kept haunting me even as I focused attention to other matters.

My "answer" to George was (and remains), though not quite as strongly as when I first composed it, that photography is harder. The really hard part is explaining (if only to myself!) what I mean by "harder" ;-)

So, here are a few thoughts. First, the creative aspects of both professions, for me, are, on a meta-level, roughly equivalent. That is, in their respective domains, both physics and photography tap into the same ineffably non-objective part of our brains; it could take minutes to find a "solution" (to a physics problem or compositional one), or it could take days, I just don't know...but the process by which I search for a solution is, at a deep level, equivalent, and equivalently exhilarating. Indeed, it is precisely this "all but impossible to describe" process of finding a mathematical solution to a problem or finding that "just right" sequence of photographic steps (subject matter, composition, exposure, raw processing and photoshop manipulation, and print expression) to get a "print" that draws me both to physics and photography. So far, so good; and so far, about even.

On a more pragmatic level...it is a fact that physics pays the bills (at least for me; though I understand there are fine-art photographers who make a comfortable living doing precisely, and only, that, as their day job). In my case, I know that while I'm wearing my physics hat during the day, I will have loads and loads of time (for which I am well compensated) to just think and ponder problems (mostly of my choosing). I have that luxury. But in photography, the time I have is the time I both make (by myself) and borrow (and/or negotiate with my family). I therefore know - and am almost always consciously aware of the fact (even as I wander around with my camera) - that I do not have precious loads of time at my disposal; that each moment is that much more precious, and can ill-afford to squander any time.

I would be less than honest if I didn't admit to sometimes feeling that doing photography on "borrowed time" represents something of a small advantage, creatively, since I am compelled to learn to make the "best possible use" of whatever time I get. There is also the implicit understanding that when I am doing my photography, I have no pressure to perform (unlike my day-job); I do it on my time, of my choosing, and lose nothing, really, if a particular day (or week) leads to abject creative failure.

On the other hand (just how many sides to this are there? ;-), I am my own harshest critic when it comes to photography, and I always have to come up with lame excuses to myself about why a photo-safari day came to naught. Over the long haul that too takes its toll (as my standards inevitably creep upwards, even as my perceived "quality" either stays the same or diminishes (as I get lazier, or tired, or just older).

So, which is "easier" when all is said and done; physics or photography? I think I'm still siding with George on this one. Its not that when I'm doing physics I'm "going through the motions" (I certainly hope not!), but my "day job" has the virtue of having much of its substance (and most of its activity) predefined for me. I waste little energy - creative or otherwise - worrying about what problem to think about, or even whether today is a good day to start a new research topic or write a paper. I'm not even speaking of the mathematical techniques and computer modeling tools I'll likely be using. I know what they are, and I know (in most cases) how to apply them to the problems at hand (and if not, I know where to turn to learn about them, almost as though on auto-pilot).

But photography...well, in an important (and to non-photographers, paradoxical) sense, most photographers are happiest when they are enshrouded in the totally unknown (which can make life hard)...we peek around that perpetually elusive corner in hopes of finding something we hope we never really find: something absolutely new that we've never ever seen before, and have little or no idea about what to do with if we find it. We keep looking for the "next best shot" and the "next best processing" steps and/or tools to apply to what we've caught on film (or CCD/CMOS). We both seek the unknown (with a passion!) and are afraid of it (because the unknown always throws you off balance). And there is always the spectre of losing one's muse and no longer being able to produce good work; and simply not being up to the technical task of expressing what one's Ansel-Adams'like "previsualization" of the final print ought to look like.

We want to be tested, creatively, again and again; but the better we are at achieving our elusive goal, the more uncertain we are of our ability to keep going, and the more difficult it becomes to maintain one's focus and connection to the magic muse. Minor White may have said that "Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen," but that - unfortunately - says nothing about the poor photographer who keeps working, hunting, worrying, praying that Spirit never leaves! For that's precisely when Spirit suddenly decides it has better places to visit. It's something all photographers worry about, at some time; and the likelihood of doing so - constantly - only increases as one grows older and yearns to do great things. Needless to say, such worrisome states are not terribly conducive to genuine creativity or works of lasting value. I do not generally find myself thinking or worrying about such almost mystical matters in my day job.

Certainly, in physics, as in all sciences, there is a superficially similar (perpetual even) yearning to "learn more"...but learning is a process that most physicists have mastered long before they stumble upon the "metaphysical" dimensions of yearning (and finally succumb to it). In photography, on the other hand, there is a perpetual and utterly insatiable hunger to "find something new", which is a very, very hard thing to do, much less master.

So, as I sit here, at the "wise old age" of 47, and look back on 20 years as a physics PhD and about 35 years as a photographer (well, 36, if I include that sensational abstract I got of my bedpost with my very first polaroid;-), I'd say that photography is marginally more difficult than physics. The really fascinating thing is, though, that it only seems hard when I ponder the question of how hard it is. When I'm doing it, its effortless; and the same goes for physics, of course;-)

Postscript: The images are screenshots from a presentation (pdf link) I gave at the Smithsonian a few years ago, entitled Nature's Way: The Art of Seeing. Perhaps if there is an interest, I'll post some notes to summarize the main points. What I discussed was the creative dynamics that lies at the cusp of science and art. The last screenshot contains (in the top "bubble") the fifteen properties of life that architect Christopher Alexander expounds upon in his Opus Nature of Order.

Concerning the Spiritual in Photography

"The great epoch of the Spiritual which is already beginning, or, in embryonic form ... provides and will provide the soil in which a kind of monumental work of art must come to fashion," so prophesied the great Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, in his masterful Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1914. Since then, of course, and to varying degrees, art has been replete with many aspects of the spiritual; indeed, the traditionally religious-centric interpretation of the term has on occasion been considerably expanded by art to include mysticism, ritual and myth, symbolism, the occult, and pure abstraction. A wonderful book - The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 - that chronicles much of the history of spiritual art, and contains many wonderful reproductions of important works, was published in 1985 to highlight an exhibit held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A recent Dover reprint of another classic survey - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art - is also available; though it has only a relatively few black and white examples, the scholarship is first-rate.

The impact of the "spiritual" on photography is less clear, and has - sadly - less of a clear history. To be sure, the spiritual has never been far from photography's best practitioners; though not necessarily in overt form. Alfred Steiglitz's "Equivalents" are nothing if not quiet, soulful expressions of an inner reality, and are obviously infused with spirit in the deepest sense. Ansel Adam's portfolio of ostensibly "grand sweeping vistas" filled with Wagnerian-scale drama, are both creative affirmations of everything that is beautiful "out there," beyond the artist behind the lens, and of the poetic soul yearning desperately for a way to better communicate the transcendent beauty it sees on the inside. Adams' quest was a quintessentially spiritual one, much more so than merely aesthetic; a quest that is, regrettably (and profoundly erroneously, in my view), all-too-quickly dismissed by some latter day photographers as a product of "vision-less" Zone-system technobable and attention to irrelevant minutiae of craft. Many of Minor White's best works can be compared to those of Kandinsky, in the sense that both artists (used their respective media to) point a way toward a radically new grammar for spiritual expression. And Carl Chiarenza's visionary explorations of the "inner landscape" have been available for all to "see" for decades.

Still more recently, I've encountered the works of spiritually inclined artists such as Doug Beasley, Nicholas Hlobeczy, John Daido Loori, Deborah Dewit Marchant, and Jerry Wolfe, who each in their own way, pay homage to the spirit of Steiglitz's equivalents, and use their photography to reveal otherwise invisible realms of the soul. (Not surprisingly, Hlobeczy, Loori, and Wolfe all worked with Minor White.)

But, though there are plenty of other contemporary photographer / artists whose work is very spiritual in nature, there is little evidence to suggest that "spiritual photography" (at least in the sense I mean here) is emerging - or has ever emerged, for that matter! - as a bona-fide movement in photography. Indeed, if books such as reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (published, ironically, by Aperture, a magazine founded by Minor White and Ansel Adams!) are true indicators of the direction in which photography is currently "moving," that direction is visibly leading away from, rather than anywhere near, spirit. Deliberately staged images that shock and pound the senses into a surrealistic (and often numbingly ugly) unreality seem to be the norm; pictures that invite a quiet meditation or that simply, but sincerely, ask, "Is this not beautiful?" are rarely seen today - and when they do appear, are routinely scorned by critics as unimportant "pretty pictures" that convey no lasting meaning. (Christopher Alexander has been lamenting a similar spiritual decline in architecture and urban planning for a quarter century.) I hope I am wrong, for to move away from spiritual expression is, in my opinion, to move away from the most meaningful connection we have to the spiritual world - which is our essential wellspring of existence - as physical beings. Severing this connection, even if only implicitly by focusing our collective artistic / photographic energies onto more "sterile" - and spiritually inert - aspects of the world, means we must face the specter of losing ourselves in (or devolving backwards to) the merely physical.

For me, photography, or any other creative art form for that matter, is first and foremost a language of the transcendent; it represents a way for gifted "seers" - otherwise known as "artists" - to remind the rest of us that none of us are merely creatures of the flesh.

Art = Life = I

In the preface to the 4th volume of his (surely destined to become a revered, timeless) Opus - Nature of Order - Christoper Alexander suggests that the inner 'I' of every person, and hint of it that some experience when interacting with, or creating works of, art ...

"... is that interior element in a work of art, or in a work of nature, which makes one feel related to it. It may occur in a leaf, or in a picture, in a house, in a wave, even in a grain of sand, or in an ornament. It is not ego. It is not me. It is not individual at all, having to do with me, or you. It is humble, and enormous: that thing in common with each one of us has in us. It is the spirit which animates each living center ... This 'I' is not normally available, is drudged up, forced to the light, forced into the light of day, by the works of art."


Alexander devotes much of his final volume to developing a breathtaking view of art, nature and how the two are fused together by the inner "light" called 'I'...


"... It is my impression ... that the I or ground is a real thing, something which exists in the world, perhaps attached to matter or a pure part of matter, which is connected to the world in which we exist, in which matter exists, and that this I forms a necessary substratum to all that exists. It, in effect, a kind of blinding unity, underlying all matter."


Alexander's poetic prose resonates strongly with me (as does his entire Opus); indeed I would characterize our respective philosophical/spiritual worldviews as essentially the same.


The simplest, purest expression of why I love photography is that - on those precious, precious days when I am truly in the "Zen" of the moment and my soul (my 'I') sees unencumbered by the dirty filters of logic and cognition - I am able to share with others the magic of seeing the inner I of the world shine forth from behind the illusory veils of ordinary substance and conventional categories (that usually conspire keep it well hidden).


How do I know when I see it? Because I lose all sense of ego, yet know it is I.

God is at Eye Level

I saw this wonderful book at a local bookstore and was very moved by its sincerety, elegance, and depth (not to mention its fine photography!).

The book is a sublime gem that anyone who is interested in what photography is really all about, what life is all about, and what their soul is all about, owes it to themselves to keep it by their side! It will enhance and broaden your sense of the world, and deepen your interconnection with it.

The author/photographer, Jan Philips, is a rare creature who is equally well proficient (indeed, gifted), in being able to both effortlessly capture the timeless beauty and spirit of nature in her photos and provide an eloquent written context for those images to help others find the sacred in the ordinary. Spending time with even just a few pages leaves one with feelings of peace and tranquility; reading over the entire book, a few times perhaps, depending on mood and temperament, cannot fail to leave even the most downtroden of souls feeling joyful at simply being alive and having the privilege at marveling at life's beauty. The book, in short, is all about how everything that one looks at - and most of all the inner "I" that is always lurking somewhere in the mysterious depths of our souls looking outward through our "eyes" - is nothing but God looking in.

Phillips book is a small treasure of a book that is now on the short list of books I will never part with. Highly recommended. (Readers for whom this short description is enough to arouse their interest, should also look up Nicholas Hlobeczy's A Presence Behind the Lens: Photography And Reflections and Volume IV of Christopher Alexander's four volume opus, Nature of Order).

Readers are also strongly encouraged to visit Jan Phillips' website, which has information about her many other books, music CDs and workshops schedules.

Transcendent New Vision of Nature, Order and Beauty

Christopher Alexander's four volume Opus, Nature of Order, is an absolutely stunning achievement of the highest caliber! I agree with a quote that appears on the inner flap of each of the volumes, to the effect that while very few (if any) philosophical/conceptual works (and their authors) are likely to be remembered 500 years hence, there is a strong possibility that Alexander's Opus will be remembered as a precursor to what our present day (only partially overlapping fields of) "science" & "art" will have evolved to in 500 years (a unified, wholistic body of "Sci-Art" in which the schism between objective & subjective / inner & outer no longer exists).

What Alexander presents in these books is a tentative first stab at a magnificent new concept; not a mathematical or physical theory (though rudiments of what might go into a more formal description are also discussed). Although many of Alexander's ideas are quite subtle and require thoughtful reflection to fully comprehend and integrate into (ironically) a whole (new worldview), the basic thesis is original and profound: everything that exists contains life, and the degree (lesser or greater) to which life is manifest in "X" can be objectively determined by probing one's subjective (inner) world. Nature is seen, in this view, simply as the totality of life, continually unfolding; and beauty (as generated by local life-forms such as humans), as a resonance between outwardly objective forms and (the very deepest) subjective inner feelings.

Western science's longstanding divide between "what's out there in the world" and "what is in here, in our hearts and souls" is exchanged for a new worldview in which our understanding of the cosmos is predicated on an active unity between objectivity and subjectivity; between dispassionate form and intensely personal beauty; between "eye" and "I"; between the deepest inner feeling and continually unfolding outer life. If this sounds radical (and perhaps even a bit strange), that is because it is radical; Alexander is proposing a sweeping idea that is both revolutionary and (only in hindsight, after having read his extraordinary Opus) obvious! For it really cannot be any other way! Every thinking -- no, every feeling -- creature who wants to know our cosmos and his/her unique role in it needs to read these books. They are truly remarkable! The next great strides in art and science will be made (simultaneously) when, one day, an Einstein-Alexander appears and uses the ideas expressed in these books to develop (using a mathematics not yet created) a rigorous new theory of "Sci-Art-Beauty-Life". These are ostensibly books on "architecture"; but they far -- far -- transcend that field; they speak, collectively, about everything that exists.

Other links: Amazon, Notes (by Nikos Salingaros), and a landmark (semi-technical and deeply philosophical) paper called Harmony Seeking Computation (about which Alexander writes: "In this paper, I am trying to lay out a new form of computation, which focuses on the harmony reached in a system. This type of computation in some way resembles certain recent results in chaos theory and complexity theory. However, the orientation of harmony-seeking computation is toward a kind of computation which finds harmonious configurations, and so helps to create things, above all, in real world situations: buildings, towns, agriculture, and ecology."). This paper may just contain the essential ingredients for how "complexity science" as it is currently understood may itself evolve into a deeper understanding of nature's patterns and rhythms.