GRGR: Pynchon's urban architecture

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 13 Aug 2000, Mark Wright AIA wrote:

> Howdy
> 
> --- Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net> wrote:
>  
> > On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Mark Wright AIA wrote:
> > 
> > > Due to
> > > architects' envy of the sciences since the enlightenment (see
> > > Perez-Gomez "Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science"), every
> > > generation a new reductionist metaphor of the city arises.
> > Salingaros'
> > > hero Chris Alexander is a good example of this tendency.  Fear of
> > the
> > > "softness" of his chosen art (architecture) drove him to concoct a
> > > dissertation published in the mid 60's in book form as "Notes on
> > the
> > > Synthesis of Form", in which he made a case for a sofisticated
> > > procedure which would, through the application of a series of
> > rules,
> > 
> > Ouch, that's hitting kinda close to home. :-) Or am I wrong in
> > thinking
> > that literary criticism loves the posssibility of being subject to
> > scientific theories? Which is fine with me of course.
> 
> I am overcoming, with difficulty, the humiliation of having misspelled
> "sophisticated" before such a sophisticated assembly...
> 
> I'm exceptionally dense today Paul, what are you saying exactly?
> Mark

I was jokingly comparing the envy or desire  for something akin to
scientific exactness that you believed was motivating the architecture
example under discussion, to what literary criticism may be similarly
desiring when it works from rather abstruse theory. Bum rap of course.
Science is only another text. 

			P.