Wednesday, 6 January 2016

Disorder is the Disturbance of Order not the Absence of it


The meaning of order has come to mean a reduction to simple geometrical shape and the standardization of everything for everybody, the favoring of the basic physical function over expression and of rationality at the expense of spontaneous invention. It has been misinterpreted in general with a particular kind of order preferred by a generation of designers and architects and rejected by another.

Controversies over stylistic preferences come and go. Order should be taken as indispensable to the functioning of any organized system, whether its function be physical or mental. To make this easier to understand think about a car engine that can not perform without the integrated cooperation of all its parts, likewise a structure cannot fulfill its function and represent its idea unless it presents an ordered pattern.

Symmetry or regularity are themes that highly represent order but they would only apply where they suit the program.
A tree is centrically symmetrical because there is no reason for it to respond differently to different directions. The human face is a one-sided modification of the spherical head housing the brain. Likewise the facade of a building visibly acknowledges the importance of approach, entrance and exit.

Everything has some independence and completeness on its own. but at the same time is a part of larger context.
Self-contradiction is an offense against order and a mistake committed out of ignorance or oversight or for another purpose. One is in error to think that something exists and does not exist at the same time. Nor is it possible for one thing to depict two mutually exclusive properties in the same position at the same time. It can be a mixture of two separate things but it cannot be both the things at the same time since the properties of the two things would be represented by other conditions that render them exclusive of each other.

A building may be designed without consideration of the neighbors, but almost every time it shows its unquestionable dependence to the force of gravity. Also it provides entrances and exits and adapts its shape to the intake of air and light. So the object's intrinsic order by its interaction with the environment is nor only necessary for its functioning, but also desirable for its form and appearance.

An ornamental pattern representing the corolla of a daisy can exhibit the symmetrical star shape to almost perfection. This can be considered lifeless at the same time that it excites us. The petals of an actual daisy are often not exactly alike and do not array themselves in perfect order. 
So we may like this imperfection as an image of our own way of behaving by a variety of individual impulses, which we cherish because they document our freedom from mechanical replication.