authors |
Benedikt, M. |
year |
1993 |
title |
Cityspace, Cyberspace, and The Spatiology of Information |
source |
Boyer,C. & Gandelsonas.,M. The New Urbanism Princeton University Press |
summary |
The concept of space has been critical to architectural theory for over seventy years now. It remains however, an elusive idea, on the one hand meaning and referring to everything, on the other hand meaning and referring to nothing. Why? Is it because "space," like "time," is a category outside of which thinking itself seems to be impossible, just as Kant asserted? Is it simply one of those irreducible, universal without which the world as such would cease to in any sense, let alone be of, or perceived by, sentient beings givens be thought Certainly to suggest that space itself is an active, causative agent of some sort risks opening that discussion up to universalizing of the most extreme and vacuous kind. For if I am not to be a dualist, positing a separate, a-spatial and a-temporal realm for thought and feeling, then what in the real world, I can easily ask, occupies neither space nor time? What is it that cannot be reduced, be analyzed, or be spoken of finally in the language of position, duration, connection, inclusion, transformation, and so forth? Nothing. If we wish to reach deeply into the "nature" of "space itself" then, I believe we must allow into it, as it were, of some sort: not the aether of Nineteenth century science perhaps, but a registering, tracing, questioning, remembering substance, spread as thinly as we can imagine but present nonetheless, and definitive of versus because of how it pools, how it vibrates, how it scatters difference, a substance here there difference. |
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2003/11/21 15:16 |
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