Christopher Alexander has died
While Christopher Alexander will be mainly remembered for A Pattern Language, I do think he was onto some really interesting philosophical ideas in his attempt to define life as an analog (as in, not binary) value of structure. He didn't have the words or precise knowledge to do it in The Nature Of Order series, but you can see him scratching at it.<p>Life is defined currently in a nebulous way that is primarily an internal property of an entity. When determining if an individual entity is alive we look inside it and dissect it into its components to determine whether they are organic.<p>I think what Alexander was trying to get at was that life is a presence of certain patterns. He identified these patterns through an architectural lens as 15 patterns. He is clear that there are less than 15, he just found it easier to teach these patterns to architectural students as 15 different patterns. These patterns are things like deep interlock between patterns (think of a complex carpet) strong borders and a diversity of scale in elements. Crucially these patterns are not an inherent property of some element, but rather a property that arises out of relationship with other elements.<p>I see a lot of truth in these ideas in that I think it makes far more sense to see life as an arrangement of matter into certain shapes that give rise to self-perpetuating and mutually reinforcing patterns. Christopher Alexander came at this idea from trying to articulate what exactly is so suffocating about modern architecture (and why it feels so anxiety inducing and alienating) but I think the implications are for Christopher Alexander characteristically broad.<p>I hope people like Nikos Salingaros continue going down this road.