This week I am very happy to report that I had an essay published in Erraticus. Erraticus publishes essays (as well as hosts podcasts and many other things!) on ideas across multiple disciplines: philosophy, psychology, poetry, culture, science & technology. The unifying thread across all of these essays is a pragmatic approach to ideas - selecting ideas that first and foremost can help us to live better.
I am proud to say that this is my first time being picked up by another publication. It was a great experience to work with the editorial team and I was happy with how the final piece turned out.
Look for Things That Don’t Change
Invariant Creation
Core to James J. Gibson’s ecological approach to perception is the idea that perception makes use of a dynamic, perspective structure interacting with the invariant structure of the world around us. In other words, as you move through the environment the shifts in your perspective interact with the unchanging elements of the world to create your perceptions.
One example Gibson uses to illustrate this is the mystery of how we perceive the rectangular structure of a table. From any one point of perspective when you look at a table, unless you are standing exactly perpendicular to it, you will not actually see precisely a rectangle but a trapezoid. However, as you move around the table it will generate a large set of different trapezoids unique to each perspective you move through. Across all of these trapezoids there is an invariant set of angles and an invariant set of proportions. Your shifting perspective structure brings forth the invariant structure that underlies the world it inhabits.
This high-level description provides a foundation for how we perceive the world. It shows how we can have objective perceptions without getting lost in a purely subjective process of working through visual stimuli in each individuals mind. But, people are not simply passive recipients of information. We also create new things and modify the structures around us. Is it possible that in the same way that the interplay of perspective structure and invariant structure precisely defines the world that we perceive there are forces that can just as precisely define the way that we create (or at least the way that we should create)?
Here’s a quote from The Timeless Way of Building Christopher Alexander:
There is one timeless way of building…. And there is no other way in which a building or a town which lives can possibly be made.
This does not mean that all ways of making buildings are identical. It means that at the core of all successful acts of building and at the core of all successful processess of growth, even though there are a million different versions of these acts and processes, there is one fundamental invariant feature, which is responsible for their success. Although this way has taken on a thousand different forms at different times, in different places, still, there is an unavoidable invariant core to all of them.1
Elsewhere Alexander elaborates that this invariant core is a kind of self-organising principle. It’s a way of building that comes naturally to all people as a result of the way that they can harmonise the forces of nature.
Again we have a changing structure that interacts with an unchanging one. However, the relationship has flipped. Where before it was the individual perspective that shifted and the environment that varied, now it is the environment that varies and the way that one builds within it that stays the same.
Put another way, people always live in unique environments with particular climates, cultural norms, languages, economic realities and religious systems. Within this environment, they also bring unique aspects with their life stories, emotional tenors and personal skills.
As this environment, both external and internal, changes the building that is needed to harmonise the different forces expressed likewise changes. Creating this harmony without any internal contradictions, however is a precise process. This process of harmonisation, emerging from the builder, remains the same.
Thanks to Casey Li for reading a draft of this essay
Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building