Design

2 I GOODNESS O F FIT

The ultimate object of design is form.

The reason that iron filings placed in a magnetic field exhibit

a pattern - or have form, as we say - is that the field they

are in is not homogeneous. If the world were totally regular

and homogeneous, there would be no forces, and no forms.

Everything would be amorphous. But an irregular world tries

to compensate for its own irregularities by fitting itself to

them, and thereby takes on form.1 D' Arcy Thompson has even

called form the " diagram of forces" for the irregularities. 2

More usually we speak of these irregularities as the functional

origins of the form.

The following argument is based on the assumption that

physical clarity cannot be achieved in a form until there is

first some programmatic clarity in the designer's mind and

actions ; and that for this to be possible , in turn , the designer must first trace his design problem to its earliest functional

origins and be able to find some sort of pattern in them. 3 I

shall try to outline a general way of stating design problems which draws attention to these functional origins, and makes

their pattern reasonably easy to see.

It is based on the idea that every design problem begins

with an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form

in question and its context.4 The form is the solution to the

problem ; the context defines the problem. In other words,

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when we speak of design, the real object of discussion is not

the form alone, but the ensemble comprising the form and its

context. Good fit is a desired property of this ensemble which

relates to some particular division of the ensemble into form

and context.5 There is a wide variety of ensembles which we can talk

about like this. The biological ensemble made up of a natural

organism and its physical environment is the most familiar :

in this case we are used to describing the fit between the two

as well-adaptedness. 6 But the same kind of objective aptness

is to be found in many other situations . The ensemble consist­

ing of a suit and tie is a familiar case in point; one tie goes well

with a certain suit, another goes less well . 7 Again, the ensemble

may be a game of chess, where at a certain stage of the game

some moves are more appropriate than others because they

fit the context of the previous moves more aptly. 8 The en­

semble may be a musical composition- musical phrases have

to fit their contexts too : think of the perfect rightness when

Mozart puts just this phrase at a certain point in a sonata. 9

If the ensemble is a truckdriver plus a traffic sign, the graphic

design of the sign must fit the demands made on it by the

driver's eye. An object like a kettle has to fit the context of its use, and the technical context of its production cycle .10 In the pursuit of urbanism, the ensemble which confronts us is the city and its habits. Here the human background which defines the need for new buildings, and the physical environ­ ment provided by the available sites, make a context for the form of the city's growth. In an extreme case of this kind, we may even speak of a culture itself as an ensemble in which

the various fashions and artifacts which develop are slowly

fitted to the rest.11

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The rightness of the form depends, in each one of these

cases, on the degree to which it fits the rest of the ensemble .12

We must also recognize that no one division of the ensemble

into form and context is unique. Fitness across any one such

division is just one instance of the ensemble's internal coher­

ence . Many other divisions of the ensemble will be equally

significant . Indeed, in the great majority of actual cases, it

is necessary for the designer to consider several different

divisions of an ensemble, superimposed, at the same time.

Let us consider an ensemble consisting of the kettle plus

everything about the world outside the kettle which is relevant

to the use and manufacture of household utensils. Here again

there seems to be a clear boundary between the teakettle

and the rest of the ensemble, if we want one, because the kettle

itself is a clearly defined kind of object. But I can easily make

changes in the boundary. If I say that the kettle is the wrong

way to heat domestic drinking water anyway, I can quickly

be involved in the redesign of the entire house, and thereby

push the context back to those things outside the house

which influence the house 's form. Alternatively I may claim

that it is not the kettle which needs to be redesigned, but the method of heating kettles. In this case the kettle becomes part of the context, while the stove perhaps is form.

There are two sides to this tendency designers have to change the definition of the problem. On the one hand, the

impractical idealism of designers who want to redesign entire

cities and whole processes of manufacture when they are asked

to design simple objects is often only an attempt to loosen

difficult constraints by stretching the form-context boundary.

On the other hand, this way in which the good designer

keeps an eye on the possible changes at every point of the

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ensemble is part of his job. He is bound, if he knows what he

is doing , to be sensitive to the fit at several boundaries within

the ensemble at once. Indeed, this ability to deal with several

layers of form-context boundaries in concert is an important

part of what we often refer to as the designer's sense of or­

ganization. The internal coherence of an ensemble depends

on a whole net of such adaptations. In a perfectly coherent

ensemble we should expect the two halves of every possible

division of the ensemble to fit one another.

It is true, then, that since we are ultimately interested in

the ensemble as a whole , there is no good reason to divide it up

just once. We ought always really to design with a number of

nested, overlapped form-context boundaries in mind. Indeed,

the form itself relies on its own inner organization and on the

internal fitness between the pieces it is made of to control its

fit as a whole to the context outside.

However, since we cannot hope to understand this highly

interlaced and complex phenomenon until we understand how

to achieve fit at a single arbitrarily chosen boundary, we must

agree for the present to deal only with the simplest problem. Let us decide that, for the duration of any one discussion , we shall maintain the same single division of a given ensemble into form and context, even though we acknowledge that the division is probably chosen arbitrarily. And let us remember, as a corollary, that for the present we shall be giving no deep thought to the internal organization of the form as such, but

only to the simplest premise and aspect of that organization :

namely, that fitness which is the residue of adaptation across

the single form-context boundary we choose to examine.13

The form is a part of the world over which we have control , and which we decide to shape while leaving the rest of the

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world as it is . The context is that part of the world which

puts demands on this form ; anything in the world that makes

demands of the form is context . Fitness is a relation of mutual

acceptability between these two . In a problem of design we

want to satisfy the mutual demands which the two make on one another. We want to put the context and the form into

effortless contact or frictionless coexistence.

We now come to the task of characterizing the fit between

form and context. Let us consider a simple specific case .

It is common practice in engineering, if we wish to make a

metal face perfectly smooth and level, to fit it against the

surface of a standard steel block, which is level within finer

limits than those we are aiming at, by inking the surface of

this standard block and rubbing our metal face against the

inked surface. If our metal face is not quite level , ink marks

appear on it at those points which are higher than the rest .

We grind away these high spots, and try to fit it against the

block again . The face is level when it fits the block perfectly, so that there are no high spots which stand out any more .

This ensemble of two metal faces is so simple that we shall not be distracted by the possibility of multiple form-context boundaries within it. There is only one such boundary worth discussion at a macroscopic level , that between the standard face (the context) , and the face which we are trying to smooth (the form.) Moreover, since the context is fixed, and only the

form variable , the task of smoothing a metal face serves well

as a paradigm design problem. In this case we may distinguish

good fit from bad experimentally, by inking the standard

block, putting the metal face against it, and checking the

marking that gets transferred. If we wish to judge the form

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without actually putting it in contact with its context, in this

case we may also do so. If we define levelness in mathematical

terms, as a limitation on the variance which is permitted over

the surface , we can test the form itself , without testing it

against the context. We can do this because the criterion for

levelness is, simultaneously, a description of the required

form, and also a description of the context.

Consider a second, slightly more complex example. Suppose

we are to invent an arrangement of iron filings which is stable

when placed in a certain position in a given magnetic field.

Clearly we may treat this as a design problem. The iron filings

constitute a form, the magnetic field a context. Again we may

easily judge the fit of a form by placing it in the magnetic

field, and watching to see whether any of the filings move

under its influence. If they do not, the form fits well . And

again, if we wish to judge the fit of the form without recourse

to this experiment, we may describe the lines of force of the

magnetic field in mathematical terms, and calculate the fit

or lack of fit. As before, the opportunity to evaluate the form

when it is away from its context depends on the fact that we

can give a precise mathematical description of the context

(in this case the equations of the magnetic field).

In general, unfortunately, we cannot give an adequate

description of the context we are dealing with. The fields of

the contexts we encounter in the real world cannot be described

in the unitary fashion we have found for levelness and mag­

netic fields. There is as yet no theory of ensembles capable of

expressing a unitary description of the varied phenomena we

encounter in the urban context of a dwelling, for example,

or in a sonata, or a production cycle .

Yet we certainly need a way of evaluating the fit of a form

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which does not rely on the experiment of actually trying the

form out in the real world context. Trial-and-error design is

an admirable method. But it is just real world trial and error

which we are trying to replace by a symbolic method, because

real trial and error is too expensive and too slow.

The experiment of putting a prototype form in the context

itself is the real criterion of fit. A complete unitary description

of the demands made by the context is the only fully adequate

nonexperimental criterion . The first is too expensive, the

second is impossible : so what shall we do?

Let us observe, first of all, that we should not really expect

to be able to give a unitary description of the context for

complex cases : if we could do so, there would be no problems

of design. The context and the form are complementary. This

is what lies behind D' Arcy Thompson's remark that the form

is a diagram of forces.14 Once we have the diagram of forces

in the literal sense (that is, the field description of the con­

text) , this will in essence also describe the form as a comple­

mentary diagram of forces. Once we have described the levelness of the metal block, or the lines of force of the mag­ netic field, there is no conceptual difficulty, only a technical one, in getting the form to fit them, because the unitary de­ scription of the context is in both cases also a description of

the required form.

In such cases there is no design problem. What does make

design a problem in real world cases is that we are trying to

make a diagram for forces whose field we do not understand.15

Understanding the field of the context and inventing a form

to fit it are really two aspects of the same process. It is because

the context is obscure that we cannot give a direct, fully

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coherent criterion for the fit we are trying to achieve ; and it

is also its obscurity which makes the task of shaping a well­

fitting form at all problematic . What do we do about this

difficulty in everyday cases? Good fit means something, after

all- even in cases where we cannot give a completely satis­

factory fieldlike criterion for it . How is it, cognitively, that

we experience the sensation of fit?

If we go back to the procedure of leveling metal faces against

a standard block, and think about the way in which good fit

and bad fit present themselves to us, we find a rather curious

feature . Oddly enough, the procedure suggests no direct prac­

tical way of identifying good fit. We recognize bad fit when­

ever we see a high spot marked by ink. But in practice we see

good fit only from a negative point of view, as the limiting

case where there are no high spots.

Our own lives, where the distinction between good and bad

fit is a normal part of everyday social behavior, show the

same feature . If a man wears eighteenth-century dress today, or wears his hair down to his shoulders, or builds Gothic mansions, we very likely call his behavior odd: it does not fit our time. These are abnormalities. Yet it is such departures from the norm which stand out in our minds, rather than the norm itself . Their wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness of less peculiar b�havior, and therefore more compelling . Thus even in everyday life the concept of good fit, though positive in meaning, seems very largely to feed on negative instances ; it is the aspects of our lives which

are obsolete, incongruous, or out of tune that catch our

attention .

The same happens in house design . We should find it almost

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impossible to characterize a house which fits its context. Yet

it is the easiest thing in the world to name the specific kinds

of misfit which prevent good fit. A kitchen which is hard to

clean, no place to park my car , the child playing where it

can be run down by someone else's car, rainwater coming in ,

overcrowding and lack of privacy, the eye-level grill which

spits hot fat right into my eye , the gold plastic doorknob

which deceives my expectations, and the front door I cannot

find, are all misfits between the house and the lives and habits

it is meant to fit. These misfits are the forces which must

shape it, and there is no mistaking them. Because they are

expressed in negative form they are specific , and tangible

enough to talk about.

The same thing happens in perception . Suppose we are

given a button to match, from among a box of assorted but­

tons. How do we proceed? We examine the buttons in the box,

one at a time ; but we do not look directly for a button which

fits the first . What we do, actually, is to scan the buttons,

rejecting each one in which we notice some discrepancy (this

one is larger, this one darker, this one has too many holes,

and so on) , until we come to one where we can see no differ- ·

ences. Then we say that we have found a matching one .

Notice that here again it is much easier to explain the misfit

of a wrong button than to justify the congruity of one which

fits.

When we speak of bad fit we refer to a single identifiable

property of an ensemble, which is immediate in experience,

and describable . Wherever an instance of misfit occurs in an

ensemble, we are able to point specifically at what fails and

to describe it. It seems as though in practice the concept of

good fit, describing only the absence of such failures and hence

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leaving us nothing concrete to refer to in explanation , can only

be explained indirectly ; it is, in practice , as it were, the dis­

junction of all possible misfits. 16

With this in mind, I should like to recommend that we

should always expect to see the process of achieving good fit

between two entities as a negative process of neutralizing the

incongruities, or irritants, or forces, which cause misfitP

It will be objected that to call good fit the absence of cer­

tain negative qualities is no more illuminating than to say

that it is the presence of certain positive qualities . 18 How­

ever, though the two are equivalent from a logical point of

view, from a phenomenological and practical point of view

they are very different. 19 In practice, it will never be as

natural to speak of good fit as the simultaneous satisfaction

of a number of requirements , as it will be to call it the simul­

taneous nonoccurrence of the same number of corresponding

misfits.

Let us suppose that we did try to write down a list of all possible relations between a form and its context which were required by good fit. (Such a list would in fact be just the list of requirements which designers often do try to write down.) In theory, we could then use each requirement on the list as an independent criterion, and accept a form as well fitting

only if it satisfied all these criteria simultaneously.

However, thought of in this way, such a list of require­

ments is potentially endless, and still really needs a " field " description to tie it together. Think, for instance, of trying to specify all the properties a button had to have in order to

match another. Apart from the kinds of thing we have al­

ready mentioned, size, color, number of holes, and so on ,

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we should also have to specify its specific gravity, its electro­

static charge, its viscosity, its rigidity, the fact that it should

be round, that it should not be made of paper, etc . , etc. In

other words, we should not only have to specify the qualities

which distinguish it from all other buttons, but we should also

have to specify all the characteristics which actually made it

a button at all .

Unfortunately, the list of distinguishable characteristics we

can write down for the button is infinite . It remains infinite

for all practical purposes until we discover a field description

of the button . Without the field description of the button,

there is no way of reducing the list of required attributes to

finite terms. We are therefore forced to economize when we

try to specify the nature of a matching button , because we

can only grasp a finite list (and rather a short one at that).

Naturally, we choose to specify those characteristics which

are most likely to cause trouble in the business of matching,

and which are therefore most useful in our effort to distinguish

among the objects we are likely to come across in our search

for buttons. But to do this, we must rely on the fact that a

great many objects will not even come up for consideration . There are, after all , conceivable objects which are buttons in every respect except that they carry an electric charge of one

thousand coulombs, say. Yet in practice it would be utterly

superfluous, as well as rather unwieldy, to specify the elec­

trostatic charge a well-matched button needed to have . No button we are likely to find carries such a charge, so we ignore the possibility. The only reason we are able to match one thing with another at all is that we rely on a good deal of

unexpressed information contained in the statement of the

task, and take a great deal for granted.20

In the case of a design problem which is truly problematical,

we encounter the same situation . We do not have a field de­

scription of the context, and therefore have no intrinsic way

of reducing the potentially infinite set of requirements to

finite terms. Yet for practical reasons we do need some way of

picking a finite set from the infinite set of possible ones. In

the case of requirements, no sensible way of picking this finite

set presents itself . From a purely descriptive standpoint we

have no way of knowing which of the infinitely many relations

between form and context to include, and which ones to leave

out. But if we think of the requirements from a negative point

of view, as potential misfits, there is a simple way of picking

a finite set . This is because it is through misfit that the

problem originally brings itself to our attention. We take just

those relations between form and context which obtrude most

strongly, which demand attention most clearly, which seem

most likely to go wrong. We cannot do better than this.21 If

there were some intrinsic way of reducing the list of require­

ments to a few, this would mean in essence that we were in possession of a field description of the context: if this were so, the problem of creating fit would become trivial, and no longer a problem of design. We cannot have a unitary or field de­ scription of a context and still have a design problem worth attention.

In the case of a real design problem, even our conviction that there is such a thing as fit to be achieved is curiously flimsy and insubstantial . We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles : a form which we have not yet designed, and a context which we cannot properly describe. The only reason we have for thinking that there must be some

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kind of fit to be achieved between them is that we can detect

incongruities, or negative instances of it. The incongruities in

an ensemble are the primary data of experience. If we agree

to treat fit as the absence of misfits, and to use a list of those

potential misfits which are most likely to occur as our criterion

for fit, our theory will at least have the same nature as our

intuitive conviction that there is a problem to be solved.

The results of this chapter, expressed in formal terms, are

these . If we divide an ensemble into form and context, the

fit between them may be regarded as an orderly condition of

the ensemble, subject to disturbance in various ways, each

one a potential misfit. Examples are the misfits between a

house and its users, mentioned on page 23. We may summarize

the state of each potential misfit by means of a binary variable.

If the misfit occurs, we say the variable takes the value 1.

If the misfit does not occur, we say the variable takes the

value 0. Each binary variable stands for one possible kind

of misfit between form and context.22 The value this variable

takes, 0 or 1, describes a state of affairs that is not either in the

form alone or in the context alone, but a relation between the two. The state of this relation, fit or misfit, describes one aspect of the whole ensemble . It is a condition of harmony and good fit in the ensemble that none of the possible misfits should

actually occur. We represent this fact by demanding that all

the variables take the value 0.

The task of design is not to create form which meets cer­

tain conditions, but to create such an order in the ensemble

that all the variables take the value 0. The form is simply that

part of the ensemble over which we have control. It is only

through the form that we can create order in the ensemble .

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3 I T HE SO U R C E O F GOOD FI T

We must now try to find out how we should go about getting

good fit. Where do we find it? What is the characteristic of

processes which create fit successfully?

It has often been claimed in architectural circles that the

houses of simpler civilizations than our own are in some sense

better than our own houses.1 While these claims have perhaps

been exaggerated, the observation is still sometimes correct.

I shall try to show that the facts behind it, if correctly inter­

preted, are of great practical consequence for an intelligently conceived process of design .

Let us consider a few famous modern houses for a moment,

from the point of view of their good fit. Mies Van der Rohe's

Farnsworth house, though marvelously clear, and organized under the impulse of certain tight formal rules, is certainly

not a triumph economically or from the point of view of the Illinois fioods.2 Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes have solved the weight problem of spanning space, but you can hardly put doors in them. Again, his dymaxion house, though

efficient as a rapid-distribution mass-produced package, takes

no account whatever of the incongruity of single free-standing

houses set in the acoustic turmoil and service complexity of a

modern city.3 Even Le Corbusier in the Villa Savoie, for ex­

ample, or in the Marseilles apartments, achieves his clarity

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of form at the expense of certain elementary comforts and

conveniences. 4

Laymen like to charge sometimes that these designers have

sacrificed function for the sake of clarity, because they are

out of touch with the practical details of the housewife 's

world, and preoccupied with their own interests. This is a mis­

leading charge. What is true is that designers do often develop

one part of a functional program at the expense of another.

But they do it because the only way they seem able to or­

ganize form clearly is to design under the driving force of some

comparatively simple concept.

On the other hand, if designers do not aim principally at

clear organization, but do try to consider all the requirements

equally, we find a kind of anomaly at the other extreme. Take

the average developer-built house ; it is built with an eye for

the market, and in a sense, therefore, fits its context well,

even if superficially. But in this case the various demands

made on the form are met piecemeal, without any sense of

the overall organization the form needs in order to contribute

as a whole to the working order of the ensemble.

Since everything in the human environment can nowadays

be modified by suitable purchases at the five and ten, very

little actually has to be taken care of in the house's basic

organization. Instead of orienting the house carefully for sun

and wind, the builder conceives its organization without

concern for orientation, and light, heat, and ventilation are

taken care of by fans, lamps, and other kinds of peripheral

devices. Bedrooms are not separated from living rooms in

plan, but are placed next to one another and the walls between

them then stuffed with acoustic insulation .

The complaint that macroscopic clarity is missing in these

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cases is no aesthetic whim. While it is true that an individual

problem can often be solved adequately without regard for

the fundamental physical order it implies, we cannot solve a

whole net of such problems so casually, and get away with it.

It is inconceivable that we should succeed in organizing an

ensemble as complex as the modern city until we have a clear

enough view of simpler design problems and their implications

to produce houses which are physically clear as total organi­

zations.

Yet at present, in our own civilization, house forms which

are clearly organized and also satisfactory in all the respects

demanded by the context are almost unknown.

If we look at a peasant farmhouse by comparison, or at an

igloo, or at an African's mud hut, this combination of good fit

and clarity is not quite so hard to find. Take the Mousgoum

hut, for instance, built by African tribesmen in the northern

section of the French Cameroun. 5 Apart from the variation

caused by slight changes in site and occupancy, the huts vary

very little. Even superficial examination shows that they are

all versions of the same single form type, and convey a power­

ful sense of their own adequacy and nonarbitrariness.

Whether by coincidence or not, the hemispherical shape of

the hut provides the most efficient surface for minimum heat

transfer, and keeps the inside reasonably well protected from

the heat of the equatorial sun. Its shape is maintained by a

series of vertical reinforcing ribs. Besides helping to support

the main fabric, these ribs also act as guides for rainwater,

and are at the same time used by the builder of the hut as

footholds which give him access to the upper part of the out­

side during its construction. 6 Instead of using disposable

scaffolding (wood is very scarce) , he builds the scaffolding

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in as part of the structure . What is more, months later this

" scaffolding " is still there when the owner needs to climb up

on it to repair the hut. The Mousgoum cannot afford, as we

do, to regard maintenance as a nuisance which is best for­

gotten until it is time to call the local plumber. It is in the

same hands as the building operation itself, and its exigencies

are as likely to shape the form as those of the initial con­

struction.

Again, each hut nestles beautifully in the dips and hollows

of the terrain . It must, because its fabric is as weak struc­

turally as the earth it sits on, and any foreignness or discon­

tinuity caused by careless siting would not have survived the

stresses of erosion . The weather-defying concrete foundations

which we rely on, and which permit the arbitrary siting of our

own houses, are unknown to the Mousgoum.

The grouping of the huts reflects the social order of their

inhabitants. Each man's hut is surrounded by the huts of his

wives and his subservients, as social customs require - and

in such a way, moreover, that these subsidiary huts also form a wall round the chief's hut and thereby protect it and them­

selves from wild beasts and invaders. 7 This example shows how the pattern of the building oper­

ation, the pattern of the building's maintenance, the con­ straints of the surrounding conditions, and also the pattern of daily life , are fused in the form. The form has a dual co­

herence. It is coherently related to its context . And it is

physically coherent.

This kind of dual coherence is common in simple cultures.

Yet in our own culture the only forms which match these

simpler forms for overall clarity of conception are those we

have already mentioned, designed under the impulse of very

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special preoccupations. And these forms, just because they

derive their clarity from simplification of the problem, fail

to meet all the context's demands. 8 It is true that our func­

tional standards are higher than those in the simple situation .

It is true, and important to remember, that the simple cul­

tures never face the problems of complexity which we face in

design. And it is true that if they did face them, they would

probably not make any better a showing than we do. 9 When

we admire the simple situation for its good qualities, this

doesn't mean that we wish we were back in the same situation.

The dream of innocence is of little comfort to us ; our problem,

the problem of organizing form under complex constraints ,

is new and all our own. But in their own way the simple cul­

tures do their simple job better than we do ours. I believe that

only careful examination of their success can give us the in­

sight we n.eed to solve the problem of complexity. Let us ask,

therefore, where this success comes from.

To answer this question we shall first have to draw a sharp

and arbitrary line between those cultures we want to call

simple, for the purposes of argument, and those we wish to

classify with ours. I propose calling certain cultures unself­ conscious, to contrast them with others, including our own, which I propose to call selfconscious.

Of course, the contrast in quality between the forms pro­

duced in the two different kinds of culture is by no means as

marked as I shall suggest. Nor are the two form-making

processes sharply distinguished, as my text pretends. But I

have deliberately exaggerated the contrast, simply to draw

attention to certain matters, important and illuminating in

their own right, which we must understand before we can

map out a new approach to design. It is far more important

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that we should understand the particular contrast I am trying

to bring out, than that the facts about any given culture

should be accurate or telling. This is not an anthropological

treatise , and it is therefore best to think of the first part of

the following discussion simply as a comparison of two de­

scriptive constructs, the unselfconscious culture and the self­

conscious culture .10

The cultures I choose to call " unselfconscious " have, in

the past, been called by many other names - each name

chosen to illuminate whatever aspect of the contrast between

kinds of culture the writer was most anxious to bring out.

Thus they have been called " primitive," to distinguish them

from those where kinship plays a less important part in social

structure ; 11 " folk," to set them apart from urban cultures ; 12

"closed," to draw attention to the responsibility of the indi­

vidual in today's more open situation ; 13 " anonymous," to

distinguish them from cultures in which a profession called

" architecture " exists.H The particular distinction I wish to make touches only the

last of these : the method of making things and buildings. Broadly, we may distinguish between our own culture, which is very selfconscious about its architecture, art, and engineer­ ing, and certain specimen cultures which are rather unself­ conscious about theirs. 1 5 The features which distinguish architecturally unselfconscious cultures from selfconscious ones are easy to describe loosely. In the unselfconscious culture there is little thought about architecture or design as such. There is a right way to make buildings and a wrong way ; but while there may be generally accepted remedies for specific failures, there are no general principles comparable to Alberti 's treatises or Le Corbusier's . Since the division of labor is very

3 3

limited, specialization of any sort is rare, there are no archi­

tects, and each man builds his own house . 1 6

The technology of communication is underdeveloped. There

are no written records or architectural drawings, and little

intercultural exchange. This lack of written records and lack

of information about other cultures and situations means that

the same experience has to be won over and over again gen­

eration after generation - without opportunity for develop­

ment or change. With no variety of experience, people have no

chance to see their own actions as alternatives to other possi­

bilities, and instead of becoming selfconscious, they simply

repeat the patterns of tradition , because these are the only

ones they can imagine . In a word, actions are governed by

habitP Design decisions are made more according to custom

than according to any individual's new ideas. Indeed, there is

l ittle value attached to the individual's ideas as such. There

is no special market for his inventiveness. Ritual and taboo

discourage innovation and self-criticism. Besides, since there

is no such thing as " architecture " or "design ," and no ab­

stractly formulated problems of design, the kinds of concept

needed for architectural self-criticism are too poorly developed to make such self-criticism possible ; indeed the architecture itself is hardly tangibly enough conceived as such to criticize .

To be sure that such a distinction between unselfconscious and selfconscious cultures is permissible , we need a definition which will tell us whether to call a culture unselfconscious or selfconscious on the basis of visible and reportable facts alone. We find a clearly visible distinction when we look at the way the crafts of form-building are taught and learned, the insti­ tutions under which skills pass from one generation to the next.

3 4

For there are essentially two ways in which such education can

operate, and they may be distinguished without difficulty.

At one extreme we have a kind of teaching that relies on

the novice's very gradual exposure to the craft in question, on

his abili ty to imitate by practice, on his response to sanctions,

penalties, and reinforcing smiles and frowns. The great ex­

ample of this kind of learning is the child's learning of ele­

mentary skills, like bicycle riding . He topples almost randomly

at first, but each time he does something wrong, it fails ; when

he happens to do it right, its success and the fact that his

success is recognized make him more likely to repeat it right . 18

Extended learning of this kind gives him a "total" feeling for

the thing learned - whether it is how to ride a bicycle, or a

skill like swimming, or the craft of housebuilding or weaving.

The most important feature of this kind of learning is that the

rules are not made explicit, but are, as it were, revealed

through the correction of mistakes.19

The second kind of teaching tries, in some degree, to make

the rules explicit. Here the novice learns much more rapidly,

on the basis of general " principles. " The education becomes a

formal one ; it relies on instruction and on teachers who train

their pupils, not just by pointing out mistakes, but by incul­

cating positive explicit rules. A good example is lifesaving,

where people rarely have the chance to learn by trial and

error. In the informal situation there are no " teachers ," for

the novice's mistakes will be corrected by anybody who

knows more than he . But in the formal situation , where

learning is a specialized activity and no longer happens auto­

matically, there are distinct " teachers " from whom the craft

is learned.20

These teachers, or instructors, have to condense the knowl-

3 5

edge which was once laboriously acquired in experience, for

without such condensation the teaching problem would be

unwieldy and unmanageable . The teacher cannot refer ex­

plicitly to each single mistake which can be made, for even if there were time to do so , such a list could not be learned.

A list needs a structure for mnemonic purposes.21 So the teacher invents teachable rules within which he accommo­

dates as much of his unconscious training as he can - a set

of shorthand principles.

In the unselfconscious culture the same form is made over

and over again ; in order to learn form-making, people need

only learn to repeat a single familiar physical pattern . In the

self conscious culture new purposes are occurring all the time ;

the people who make forms are constantly required to deal

with problems that are either entirely new or at best modifi­

cations of old problems. Under these circumstances it is not

enough to copy old physical patterns. So that people will be

able to make innovations and modifications as required, ideas

about how and why things get their shape must be introduced.

Teaching must be based on explicit general principles of func­

tion, rather than unmentioned and specific principles of shape .

I shall call a culture unselfconscious if its form-making is

learned informally, through imitation and correction . And

I shall call a culture selfconscious if its form-making is taught

academically, according to explicit rules.22

Now why are forms made in the selfconscious culture not

so well fitting or so clearly made as those in the unselfconscious

culture? In one case the form-making process is a good one,

in the other bad. What is it that makes a form-making process

good or bad?

In explaining why the unselfconscious process is a good one,

hardly anyone bothers, nowadays, to argue the myth of the

primitive genius, the unsophisticated craftsman supposedly

more gifted than his sophisticated counterpart.23 The myth of

architectural Darwinism has taken its place .24 Yet though this

new myth is more acceptable, in its usual form it is not really

any more informative than the other.

It says, roughly, that primitive forms are good as a result

of a process of gradual adaptation - that over many cen­

turies such forms have gradually been fitted to their cultures

by an intermittent though persistent series of corrections. But

this explanation is vague hand-waving.25 It doesn 't tell us

what it is that prevents such adaptation from taking place

successfully in the selfconscious culture, which is what we

want to know most urgently. And even as an explanation of

good fit in the unselfconscious culture, the raw concept of

adaptation is something less than satisfactory. If forms in an

unselfconscious culture fit now, the chances are that they

always did . We know of no outstanding differences between

the present states and past states of unselfconscious cultures ;

and this assumption, that the fit of forms in such cultures is

the result of gradual adjustment (that is, improvement) over time, does not illuminate what must actual ly be a dynamic process in which both form and context change continuously,

and yet stay mutually well adjusted all the time .26

To understand the nature of the form-making process, it is not enough to give a quick one-word account of unselfconscious

form-making : adaptation . We shall have to compare the de­

tailed inner working of the unselfconscious form-making proc­

ess with that of the selfconscious process, asking why one

works and the other fails. Roughly speaking, I shall argue

3 7

that the unselfconscious process has a structure that makes

it homeostatic (self-organizing) , and that it therefore consist­ ently produces well-fitting forms, even in the face of change.

And I shall argue that in a selfconscious culture the homeo­

static structure of the process is broken down, so that the pro­

duction of forms which fail to fit their contexts is not only

possible , but likely Y

We decided in the last chapter that to describe fit and misfit

between form and context, we must make a list of binary

variables, each naming some one potential misfit which may

occur.

Whether a form-making process is selfconscious or unself­

conscious, these misfit variables are always present, lingering

in the background of the process, as thoughts in a designer's

mind, or as actions, criticisms, failures, doubts. Only the

thought or the experience of possible failure provides the

impetus to make new form.

At any moment in a form-making process, whether the

form is in use , a prototype, as yet only a sketch, or obsolete , each of the variables is in a state of either fit or misfit. We

may describe the state of all the variables at once by a row

of 1 ' s and O's , one for each variable : for instance , for twenty variables, 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 000 would be one state.

Each possible row of 1 's and O's is a possible state of the

ensemble.

As form-making proceeds, so the system of variables changes

state. One misfit is eradicated, another misfit occurs , and these

changes in their turn set off reactions within the system that

affect the states of other variables. As form and culture change,

state follows state. The sequence of states which the system

3 8

passes through is a record or history of the adaptation be­

tween form and context. The history of the system displays

the form-making process at work. To compare unselfconscious

and selfconscious form-making processes, we have only to

examine the kinds of history which the system of variables

can have in these two processes. As we shall see , the kinds of

history which the system can have in the unselfconscious and

selfconscious processes are very different.

We shall perhaps understand the idea of a system's history

best if we make a simple picture of it .28

Imagine a system of a hundred lights. Each light can be

in one of two possible states. In one state the light is on. The

lights are so constructed that any light which is on always

has a 50-50 chance of going off in the next second. In the other

state the light is off. Connections between lights are con­

structed so that any light which is off has a 50-50 chance of

going on again in the next second, provided at least one of the

lights it is connected to is on. If the lights it is directly con­

nected to are off, for the time being it has no chance of going

on again, and stays off. If the lights are ever all off simultane­

ously, then they will all stay off for good, since when no light is on, none of the lights has any chance of being reactivated. This is a state of equilibrium. Sooner or later the system of lights will reach it.

This system of lights will help us understand the history of a form-making process. Each light is a binary variable, and

so may be thought of as a misfit variable . The off state cor­

responds to fit ; the on state corresponds to misfit. The fact

that a light which is on has a 50-50 chance of going off

every second, corresponds to the fact that whenever a mis­

fit occurs efforts are made to correct it. The fact that lights

3 9

which are off can be turned on again by connected lights,

corresponds to the fact that even well-fitting aspects of

a form can be unhinged by changes initiated to correct

some other misfit because of connections between variables.

The state of equilibrium, when all the lights are off, corre­

sponds to perfect fit or adaptation . It is the equilibrium in

which all the misfit variables take the value 0. Sooner or later

the system of lights will always reach this equilibrium. The

only question that remains is, how long will it take for this

to happen? It is not hard to see that apart from chance this

depends only on the pattern of interconnections between the

lights. Let us consider two extreme circumstances.29

1. On the one hand, suppose there are no interconnections

between lights at all . In this case there is nothing to prevent

each light's staying off for good, as soon as it goes off. The

average time it takes for all the lights to go off is therefore

only a little greater than the average time it takes for a single

light to go off, namely 21 seconds or 2 seconds.

2 . On the other hand, imagine such rich interconnections between lights that any one light still on quickly rouses all others from the off state and puts them on again. The only way in which this system can reach adaptation is by the pure chance that all 100 happen to go off at the same moment. The average time which must elapse before this happens will be of the order of 2100 seconds, or 1022 years.

The second case is useless. The age of the universe itself is only about 1010 years. For all intents and purposes the system will never adapt. But the first case is no use either. In any real system there are interconnections between variables which make it impossible for each variable to adapt in com-

40

plete isolation . Let us therefore construct a third possibility.

3. In this case suppose there are again interconnections

among the 100 lights, but that we discern in the pattern of

interconnections some 10 principal subsystems, each contain­

ing 10 lights.30 The lights within each subsystem are so strongly

connected to one another that again all 10 must go off simul­

taneously before they will stay off ; yet at the same time the

subsystems themselves are independent of one another as

wholes, so that the lights in one subsystem can be switched

off without being reactivated by others flashing in other sub­

systems. The average time it will take for all 100 lights to go

off is about the same as the time it takes for one subsystem to

go off, namely 210 seconds, or about a quarter of an hour.

Of course, real systems do not behave so simply. But fifteen

minutes is not much greater than the two seconds it takes an

isolated variable to adapt, and the enormous gap between

these magnitudes and 1022 years does teach us a vital lesson.

No complex adaptive system will succeed in adapting in a

reasonable amount of time unless the adaptation can proceed

subsystem by subsystem, each subsystem relatively inde­

pendent of the others.31

This is a familiar fact. It finds a close analogy in the chil­ dren's sealed glass-fronted puzzles which are such fun and so

infuriating. The problem, in these puzzles, is to achieve cer­

tain configurations within the box : rings on sticks, balls in

sockets, pieces of various shapes in odd-shaped frames - but

all to be done by gentle tapping on the outside of the box.

Think of the simplest of these puzzles, where half a dozen

colored beads, say, are each to be put in a hole of corres­

ponding color.

One way to go about this problem would be to pick the

4 1

puzzle up, give it a single energetic shake , and lay it down

again, in the hope that the correct configuration would appear

by accident. This ali-or-nothing method might be repeated

many thousand times, but it is clear that its chances of success

are negligible . It is the technique of a child who does not under­ stand how best to play. Much the easiest way - and the way

we do in fact adopt under such circumstances - is to juggle

one bead at a time . Once a bead is in, provided we tap gently,

it is in for good, and we are free to manipulate the next one

that presents itself , and we achieve the full configuration step

by step . When we treat each bead as an isolable subsystem,

and take the subsystems independently, we can solve the

puzzle .

If we now consider the process of form-making, in the light

of these examples, we see an easy way to make explicit the

distinction between processes which work and those which

don't .

Let us remind ourselves of the precise sense in which there

is a system active in a form-making process . It is a purely

fictitious system. Its variables are the conditions which must

be met by good fit between form and context. Its interactions

are the causal linkages which connect the variables to one

another. If there is not enough light in a house, for instance,

and more windows are added to correct this failure, the change

may improve the light but allow too little privacy ; another

change for more light makes the windows bigger, perhaps,

but thereby makes the house more likely to collapse . These

are examples of inter-variable linkage . If we represent this

system by drawing a point for each misfit variable, and a link

between two points for each such causal linkage, we get a

structure which looks something like this :

4 2

Now, let us go back to the question of adaptation. Clearly

these misfit variables, being interconnected, cannot adjust independently, one by one . On the other hand, since not all

the variables are equally strongly connected (in other words

there are not only dependences among the variables, but also independences) , there will always be subsystems like those

circled below, which can, in principle, operate fairly inde­

pendently.32

We may therefore picture the process of form-making as

the action of a series of subsystems, all interlinked, yet suf­

ficiently free of one another to adjust independently in a

feasible amount of time . It works, because the cycles of cor­

rection and recorrection , which occur during adaptation, are

restricted to one subsystem at a time.

4 3

We shall not be able to see, directly, whether or not the

unselfconscious and selfconscious form-making processes op­

erate by subsystems. Instead we shall infer their modes of

operation indirectly.

The greatest clue to the inner structure of any dynamic process lies in its reaction to change. A culture does not move

from one change to the next in discrete steps, of course . New

threads are being woven all the time, making changes continu­

ous and smooth. But from the point of view of its effect on a

form, change only becomes significant at that moment when

a failure or misfit reaches critical importance- at that

moment when it is recognized, and people feel the form has

something wrong with it. It is therefore legitimate, for our

purpose, to consider a culture as changing in discrete steps.33

We wish to know, now, how the form-making process re­

acts to one such change . Whether a new, previously unknown

misfit occurs or a known one recurs, in both cases, from our

point of view, some one variable changes value from 0 to 1.

What, precisely, happens when a misfit variable takes the

value 1? How does the process behave under this stimulus?

Let us go back for a moment to our system of 100 lights . Suppose the system is in a state of fit - that is, all the lights

are switched off. Now imagine that every once in a while one

light gets switched on by an outside agent, even though no

others are on to activate it . By waiting to see what happens

next, we can very easily deduce the inner nature of the system,

even though we cannot see it directly. If the light always

flashes just once, and then goes off again and stays off, we

deduce that the lights are able to adapt independently, and

hence that there are no interconnections between lights. If

the light activates a few other lights, and they flash together

4 4

for a while, and then switch themselves off, we deduce that

there are subsystems of interconnected lights active. If the

light flashes and then activates other lights until all of them

are flashing, and they never settle down again, we deduce that

the system is unable to adapt subsystem by subsystem be­

cause the interconnections are too rich.

The solitary light switched on by an external agent is the

occasional misfit which occurs. The reaction of the system to

the disturbance is the reaction of the form-making process to

the misfit . If we detect the active presence of subsystems in a

process, we may then argue (by induction, as it were) that this

is fully responsible for the good fit of the forms being produced

by the process. For if good forms can always be adjusted cor­

rectly the moment any slight misfit occurs, then no sequence

of changes will destroy the good fit ever (at least while the

process maintains this character) ; and provided there was

good fit at some stage in the past, no matter how remote

(the first term of the induction) , it will have persisted, be­ cause there is an active stability at work.34 If, on the other

hand, a form-making process is such that a minor culture

change can upset the good fit of the forms it produces, then

any well-fitting forms we may observe at one time or another fit only by accident ; and the next cultural deflection may once more lead to the production of badly fitting forms.

It is the inner nature of the process which counts. The vital

point that underlies the following discussion is that the form­

builders in unselfconscious cultures respond to small changes

in a way that allows the subsystems of the misfit system to

work independently - but that because the selfconscious re­ sponse to change cannot take place subsystem by subsystem, its forms are arbitrary.

4 5

4 I THE UNSELFCONSCIOUS PROCESS

Let us turn our attention , first of all , to the unselfconscious

cultures. It will be necessary first to outline the conditions

under which forms in unselfconscious cultures are produced .

We know by definition that building skills are learned in­

formally, without the help of formulated rules . 1 However,

although there are no formulated rules (or perhaps indeed, as

we shall see later, just because there are none), the unspoken

rules are of great complexity, and are rigidly maintained .

There is a way to do things, a way not to do them. There is a

firmly set tradition, accepted beyond question by all builders

of form, and this tradition strongly resists change .

The existence of such powerful traditions, and evidence of

their rigidity, already are shown to some extent in those aspects of unselfconscious cultures which have been discussed. It is clear, for instance, that forms do not remain the same

for centuries without traditions springing up about them. If

the Egyptian houses of the Nile have the same plan now as

the houses whose plans were pictured in the hieroglyphs/ we

can be fairly certain that their makers are in the grip of a

tradition. Anywhere where forms are virtually the same now

as they were thousands of years ago, the bonds must be ex­

tremely strong . In southern Italy, neither the trulli of Apulia

nor the coalburners' capanne of Anzio near Rome have

4 6

changed since prehistoric times.3 The same is known to be

true of the black houses of the Outer Hebrides, and of the

hogans of the Navaho.4

The most visible feature of architectural tradition in such

unselfconscious cultures is the wealth of myth and legend

attached to building habits. While the stories rarely deal

exclusively with dwellings, nevertheless descriptions of the

house, its form, its origins, are woven into many of the global

myths which lie at the yery root of culture ; and wherever"this

occurs, not only is the architectural tradition made unassail­

able , but its constant repetition is assured. The black tents,

for example, common among nomads from Tunisia to Af­

ghanistan , figure more than once in the Old Testament. 5 In

a similar way the folk tales of old Ireland and the Outer

Hebrides are full of oblique references to the shape of houses. 6

The age of these examples gives us an inkling of the age and

strength of the traditions which maintain the shape of un­

selfconscious dwelling forms. Wherever the house is mentioned

in a myth or lore, it at once becomes part of the higher order,

ineffable, immutable, not to be changed. When certain In­

dians of the Amazon believe that after death the soul retires

to a house at the source of a mysterious river/ the mere as­

sociation of the house with a story of this kind discourages all

thoughtful criticism of the standard form, and sets its "right­

ness" well beyond the bounds of question.

More forceful still, of course, are rituals and taboos con­

nected with the dwelling. Throughout Polynesia the resist­ ance to change makes itself felt quite unequivocally in the

fact that the building of a house is a ceremonial occasion. 8

The performance of the priests, and of the workers, though

different from one island to the next, is always clearly speci-

4 7

fied; and the rigidity of these behavior patterns, by preserving

techniques, preserves the forms themselves and makes change

extremely difficult. The Navaho Indians, too, make their

hogans the center of the most elaborate performance. 9 Again

the gravity of the rituals, and their rigidity, make it impos­

sible that the form of the hogan should be lightly changed.

The rigidity of tradition is at its clearest, though, in the

case where builders of form are forced to work within definitely

given limitations. The Samoan, if he is to make a good house,

must use wood from the breadfruit tree.10 The Italian peasant

making his trullo at Alberobello is allowed latitude for individ­ ual expression only in the lump of plaster which crowns the

cone of the roof.U The Wanoe has a chant which tells him precisely the sequence of operations he is to follow while build­

ing his house.12 The Welshman must make the crucks which

support his roof precisely according to the pattern of tradi­

tion.U The Sumatran gives his roofs their special shape, not

because this is structurally essential, but because this is the

way to make roofs in Sumatra.14

Every one of these examples points in the same direction.

Unselfconscious cultures contain, as a feature of their form­ producing systems, a certain built-in fixity- patterns of myth, tradition, and taboo which resist willful change. Form­

builders will only introduce changes under strong compulsion

where there are powerful (and obvious) irritations in the

existing forms which demand correction.

Now when there are such irritations, how fast does the fail­

ure lead to action, how quickly does it lead to a change of

form? Think first, perhaps, of man's closeness to the ground in

the unselfconscious culture, and of the materials he uses when

4 8

he makes his house. The Hebridean crofter uses stone and

clay and sods and grass and straw, all from the near surround­

ings.l5 The Indian's tent used to be made of hide from the

buffalo he ate.16 The Apulian uses as building stones the very

rocks which he has taken from the ground to make his agri­

culture possibleP These men have a highly developed eye for

the trees and stones and animals which contain the means of

their livelihood, their food, their medicine, their furniture,

their tools. To an African tribesman the materials available

are not simply objects, but are full of life.18 He knows them

through and through; and they are always close to hand.

Closely associated with this immediacy is the fact that the

owner is his own builder, that the form-maker not only makes

the form but lives in it. Indeed, not only is the man who lives

in the form the one who made it, but there is a special close­

ness of contact between man and form which leads to constant

rearrangement of unsatisfactory detail, constant improvement.

The man, already responsible for the original shaping of the form, is also alive to its demands while he inhabits it.19 And

anything which needs to be changed is changed at once. The Abipon, whose dwelling was the simplest tent made of

two poles and a mat, dug a trench to carry off the rain if it bothered him.20 The Eskimo reacts constantly to every change

in temperature inside the igloo by opening holes or closing them with lumps of snow.21 The very special directness of

these actions may be made clearer, possibly, as follows. Think

of the moment when the melting snow dripping from the roof

is no longer bearable, and the man goes to do something

about it. He makes a hole which lets some cold air in, per­

haps. The man realizes that he has to do something about

it- but he does not do so by remembering the general rule

49

and then applying it ("When the snow starts to melt it is too

hot inside the igloo and therefore time to ... "). He simply

does it. And though words may accompany his action, they

play no essential part in it. This is the important point. The failure or inadequacy of the form leads directly to the action .

This directness is the second crucial feature of the unself­

conscious system's form-production. Failure and correction

go side by side. There is no deliberation in between the

recognition of a failure and the reaction to it.22 The directness

is enhanced, too, by the fact that building and repair are so

much an everyday affair. The Eskimo, on winter hunts, makes

a new igloo every night.23 The Indian's tepee cover rarely

lasts more than a single season.24 The mud walls of the Tal­

lensi hut need frequent daubs.25 Even the elaborate communal

dwellings of the Amazon tribes are abandoned every two or

three years, and new ones built.26 Impermanent materials and

unsettled ways of life demand constant reconstruction and

repair, with the result that the shaping of form is a task

perpetually before the dweller's eyes and hands. If a form is

made the same way several times over, or even simply left unchanged, we can be fairly sure that its inhabitant finds little wrong with it. Since its materials are close to hand, and their use his own responsibility, he will not hesitate to act if there are any minor changes which seem worth making.

Let us return now to the question of adaptation. The basic principle of adaptation depends on the simple fact that the

process toward equilibrium is irreversible. Misfit provides an

incentive to change; good fit provides none. In theory the

process is eventually bound to reach the equilibrium of well­

fitting forms.

However, for the fit to occur in practice, one vital condi-

so

tion must be satisfied. It must have time to happen . The

process must be able to achieve its equilibrium before the

next culture change upsets it again . It must actually have

time to reach its equilibrium every time it is disturbed- or,

if we see the process as continuous rather than intermittent,

the adjustment of forms must proceed more quickly than the

drift of the culture context . Unless this condition is fulfilled

the system can never produce well-fitting forms, for the

equilibrium of the adaptation will not be sustained.

As we saw in Chapter 3 , the speed of adaptation depends

essentially on whether the adaptation can take place in in­

dependent and restricted subsystems, or not. Although we

cannot actually see these subsystems in the unselfconscious

process, we can infer their activity from the very two char­

acteristics of the process which we have been discussing:

directness and tradition .

The direct response is the feedback of the process .27 If the

process is to maintain the good fit of dwelling forms while the culture drifts, it needs a feedback sensitive enough to take action the moment that one of the potential failures actually occurs. The vital feature of the feedback is its im­ mediacy. For only through prompt action can it prevent the

build-up of multiple failures which would then demand simul­

taneous correction - a task which might, as we have seen,

take too long to be feasible in practice.

However, the sensitivity of feedback is not in itself enough

to lead to equilibrium. The feedback must be controlled, or

damped, somehow.28 Such control is provided by the resistance

to change the unselfconscious culture has built into its tradi­

tions . We might say of these traditions, possibly, that they

make the system viscous. This viscosity damps the changes

5 I

made, and prevents their extension to other aspects of the

form. As a result only urgent changes are allowed. Once a

form fits well , changes are not made again until it fails to

fit again. Without this action of tradition , the repercussions

and ripples started by the slightest failure could grow wider

and wider until they were spreading too fast to be corrected .

On the one hand the directness of the response to misfit

ensures that each failure is corrected as soon as it occurs,

and thereby restricts the change to one subsystem at a time.

And on the other hand the force of tradition , by resisting

needless change , holds steady all the variables not in the

relevant subsystem, and prevents those minor disturbances

outside the subsystem from taking hold . Rigid tradition and

immediate action may seem contradictory. But it is the very

contrast between these two which makes the process self­

adjusting . It is just the fast reaction to single failures, com­

plemented by resistance to all other change, which allows

the process to make series of minor adjustments instead of spasmodic global ones: it is able to adjust subsystem by

subsystem, so that the process of adjustment is faster than

the rate at which the culture changes; equilibrium is certain to be re-established whenever slight disturbances occur ; and the forms are not simply well-fitted to their cultures, but in active equilibrium with them.29

The operation of such a process hardly taxes the individual craftsman's ability at all . The man who makes the form is an

agent simply, and very little is required of him during the

form's development . Even the most aimless changes will

eventually lead to well-fitting forms, because of the tendency

to equilibrium inherent in the organization of the process.

52

All the agent need do is to recognize failures when they occur,

and to react to them. And this even the simplest man can do.

For although only few men have sufficient integrative ability

to invent form of any clarity, we are all able to criticize

existing forms.30 It is especially important to understand that

the agent in such a process needs no creative strength. He

does not need to be able to improve the form, only to make·

some sort of change when he notices a failure . The changes

may not be always for the better ; but it is not necessary

that they should be, since the operation of the process allows

only the improvements to persist.

To make the foregoing analysis quite clear, I shall use it to

illuminate a rather curious phenomenon .31 The Slovakian

peasants used to be famous for the shawls they made . These

shawls were wonderfully colored and patterned, woven of

yarns which had been dipped in homemade dyes. Early in the twentieth century aniline dyes were made available to them. And at once the glory of the shawls was spoiled ; they

were now no longer delicate and subtle , but crude. This change cannot have come about because the new dyes were somehow inferior . They were as brilliant , and the variety of colors was much greater than before . Yet somehow the new shawls turned out vulgar and uninteresting.

Now if, as it is so pleasant to suppose , the shawlmakers

had had some innate artistry, had been so gifted that they

were simply " able " to make beautiful shawls, it would be

almost impossible to explain their later clumsiness. But if we

look at the situation differently, it is very easy to explain .

The shawlmakers were simply able , as many of us are , to

recognize bad shawls, and their own mistakes . Over the generations the shawls had doubtless often been

53

made extremely badly . But whenever a bad one was made,

it was recognized as such, and therefore not repeated. And

though nothing is to say that the change made would be for the better, it would still be a change . When the results of such changes were still bad, further changes would be made.

The changes would go on until the shawls were good . And

only at this point would the incentive to go on changing the

patterns disappear.

So we do not need to pretend that these craftsmen had

special ability. They made beautiful shawls by standing in a

long tradition, and by making minor changes whenever some­

thing seemed to need improvement. But once presented with

more complicated choices , their apparent mastery and judg­

ment disappeared. Faced with the complex unfamiliar task of

actually inventing forms from scratch, they were unsuccessful.

54

Architecture and the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass. , 1955) , pp. 95-99 and 134. No writings of Lodoli's remain, but see F. Algarotti, Saggio sopra l' architettura, in Opere, vol. II (Livorno, 1764) ; Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l'architecture, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1775) , and Observations sur l' architecture (The Hague, 1765) .

16 . Nicolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Penguin Books (London, 1953) , pp. 242-62.

17 . In denying the possibility of understanding reasonably the proc­ esses of form production, the fetish of intuition is closely parallel to other famous attempts to shelter from the loss of innocence under the wings of magic and taboo ; see, for comments, Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York, 1962) , or K. R. Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, 1950) .

18. For some recent protests against the willful nature of modern intuition in design, see Serge Chermayeff, " The Shape of Quality," Architecture Plus (Division of Architecture, A. & M. College of Texas), 2 (1959-60) : 16-23.

19. The possibility of amplifying intelligence has already been hinted at in W. Ross Ashby, " Design for an Intelligence Amplifier," in Automata Studies, ed. C. E. Shannon and J. McCarthy (Princeton, 1956) , pp. 215- 34. See also M. Minsky, " Steps towards Artificial Intelligence," Pro­ ceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 49:8-30 (January 1961).

Chapter Two. Goodness of Fit

1. The source of form actually lies in the fact that the world tries to compensate for its irregularities as economically as possible. This principle, sometimes called the principle of least action, has been noted in various fields: notably by Le Chatelier, who observed that chemical systems tend to react to external forces in such a way as to neutralize the forces; also in mechanics as Newton's law, as Lenz's law in elec­ tricity, again as Volterra's theory of populations. See Adolph Mayer, Geschichte des Prinzips der kleinsten Action (Leipzig, 1877) .

2. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1959) , p. 16 .

3 . This old idea is at least as old as Plato: see , e.g. , Gorgias 474-75. 4. The symmetry of this situation (i.e. , the fact that adaptation is a

mutual phenomenon referring to the context's adaptation to the form as much as to the form's adaptation to its context) is very important. See L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment (New York, 1913), page v: " Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relationship between the organism and the environment." Also E. H. Starling's remark, " Organism and environment form a whole, and must be viewed

pages 9-rs / I 9 5

as such." For a beautifully concise description of the concept "form," see Albert M. Dalcq, "Form and Modern Embryology," in Aspects of

Form, ed. Lancelot Whyte (London, 1951), pp. 91-116, and other articles in the same symposium.

5. At later points in the text where I use the word "system," this

always refers to the whole ensemble. However, some care is required here, since many writers refer to that part of the ensemble which is held constant as the environment, and call only the part under adjustment the "system." For these writers my form, not my ensemble, would be the system.

6. In essence this is a very old idea. It was the first clearly formu­ lated by Darwin in The Origin of Species, and has since been highly developed by such writers as W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (London, 1932), and W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain, 2nd ed. (New York, 1960).

7. Wolfgang Kohler, The Place of Value in a World of Facts (New York, 1938), p. 96.

8. A. D. de Groot, ""Ober das Denken des Schachspielers," Rivista di psicologia, 50:9Q-91 (October-December 1956). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1953), p. 15.

9. See Max Wertheimer, "Zu dem Problem der Unterscheidung von Einzelinhalt und Teil," Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 129 (1933): 356, and "On Truth," Social Research, 1:144 (May 1934).

10. K. Lonberg Holm and C. Theodore Larsen, Development Index (Ann Arbor, 1953), p. lb.

11. Again, this idea is not a new one. It was certainly present in Frank Lloyd Wright's use of the phrase "organic architecture," for example, though on his tongue the phrase contained so. many other intentions that it is hard to understand it clearly. For a good discussion see Peter Collins, "Biological Analogy," Architectural Review, 126:303-6 (December 1959).

12. This observation appears with beautiful clarity in Ozenfant's Foundations of Modern Art (New York, 1952), pp. 340-41. Also Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (London, 1935), pp. 638-44.

13. The idea that the residual patterns of adaptive processes are intrinsically well organized is expressed by W. Ross Ashby in Design for a Brain, p. 233, and by Norbert Wiener in The Human Use of Human Beings (New York, 1954), p. 37.

14. See note 2. 15. The concept of an image, comparable to the ideal field statement

of a problem, is discussed at great length in G. A. Miller, Eugene Gal­ anter, and Karl H. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (New York, 1960). The "image" is presented there as something present in

pages 15-21 / I 9 6

every problem solver's mind, and used by him as a criterion for the problem's solution and hence as the chief guide in problem planning and solving. It seems worth making a brief comment. In the majority of interesting cases I do not believe that such an image exists psycho­ logically, so that the testing paradigm described by Miller et al. in Plans is therefore an incorrect description of complex problem-solving behavior. In interesting cases the solution of the problem cannot be tested against an image, because the search for the image or criterion for success is actually going on at the same time as the search for a solution.

Miller does make a brief comment acknowledging this possibility on pp. 171-72. He also agreed to this point in personal discussions at Harvard in 1961.

16. It is not hard to see why, if this is so, the concept of good fit is relatively hard to grasp. It has been shown by a number of investigators, for example, Jerome Bruner et al., A Study of Thinking (New York, 1958) , that people are very unwilling and slow to accept disjunctive concepts. To be told what something is not is of very little use if you are trying to find out what it is. See pp. 156-81. See also C. L. Hovland and W. Weiss, "Transmission of Information Concerning Concepts through Positive and Negative Instances," Journal of Experimental Psychology, 45 (1953):175-82.

17. The near identity of "force" on the one hand, and the "re­ quiredness" generated by the context on the other, is discussed fully in Kohler, The Place of Value in a World of Facts, p. 345, and throughout pp. 329-60. There is, to my mind, a striking similarity between the difficulty of dealing with good fit directly, in spite of its primary im­ portance, and the difficulty of the concept zero. Zero and the concept of emptiness, too, are comparatively late inventions (clearly because they too leave one nothing to hold onto in explaining them). Even now we find it hard to conceive of emptiness as such: we only manage to think of it as the absence of something positive. Yet in many metaphys­ ical systems, notably those of the East, emptiness and absence are re­ garded as more fundamental and ultimately more substantial than presence.

This is also connected with the fact, now acknowledged by most biologists, that symmetry, being the natural condition of an unstressed situation, does not require explanation, but that on the contrary it is asymmetry which needs to be explained. See D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, p. 357; Wilhelm Ludwig, Recht-links-problem im Tierreich und beim M enschen (Berlin, 1932); Hermann Weyl, Symmetry (Princeton, 1952) , pp. 25-26; Ernst Mach, "tiber die physikalische Bedeutung der Gesetze der Symmetrie," Lotos, 21 (1871) : 139-47.

18. The logical equivalence of these two views is expressed by De

pages 21-24 / 1 9 7

Morgan's law, which says essentially that if A , B, C, etc., are proposi­ tions, then [(Not A ) and (Not B) and (Not C) ... ] is always the same as Not [(A or B or Cor . . . ) ].

19. For the idea that departures from closure force themselves on the attention more strikingly than closure itself, and are actually the primary data of a certain kind of evaluative experience, and for a number of specific examples (not only ethical), see Max Wertheimer, "Some Problems in Ethics," Social Research, 2: 352ff (August 1935). In par­ ticular, what I have been describing as misfits are described there as Leerstellen or emptinesses. The feeling that something is missing, and the need to fill whatever is incomplete (Luckenfiillung), are discussed in some detail.

20. Any psychological theory which treats perception or cognition as information processing is bound to come to the same kind of conclusion. For a typical discussion of such information-reducing processes, see Bruner et al., A Study of Thinking, p. 166.

21. It is perhaps instructive to note that both the concept of organic health in medicine and the concept of psychological normality in psy­ chiatry are subject to the same kind of difficulties as my conception of a well-fitting form or coherent ensemble. In their respective professions they are considered to be well defined. Yet the only definitions that can be given are of a negative kind. See, for instance, Sir Geoffrey Vickers, "The Concept of Stress in Relation to the Disorganization of Human Behavior," in Stress and Psychiatric Disorder, ed. J. M. Tanner (Oxford, 1960).

22. In case it seems doubtful whether all the relevant properties of an ensemble can be expressed as variables, let us be quite clear about the fact that these variables are not necessarily capable of continuous variation. Indeed, it is quite obvious that most of the issues which occur in a design problem cannot be treated numerically, as this would require. A binary variable is simply a formal shorthand way of classifying situations; it is an indicator which distinguishes between forms that work and those that do not, in a given context.

Chaptet· Three: The Source of Good Fit

1. Alan Houghton Brodrick, "Grass Roots," A rchitectural Review, 115: 101-11 (February 1954); W. G. Sumner, Folkways (Boston, 1908), p. 2. The same point is made by Adolf Loos in his famous story of the saddle-maker, Trotzdem, 2nd ed. (Innsbruck, 1931), pp. 13-14; to be found translated by Eduard Sekler in Journal of A rchitectural Education, vol. 12, no. 2 (Summer 1957), p. 31.

pages 24-28 / r 9 8

2. Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Mies van der Rohe (Chicago, 1956) , p. 63. 3. Robert W. Marks, The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller

(New York, 1960) , pp. 1 10-33. 4. Peter Collins, " Not with Steel and Cement," Manchester Guard­

ian Weekly, January 14, 1960. 5. Office de la Recherche Scientifique Outre-Mer, L'Habitat aux

Cameroun (Paris, 1952), p. 35. 6. Ibid., p. 38. 7. Ibid., p. 34. 8. See this chapter, p. 28. 9. Brodrick, " Grass Roots," p. 101 .

10. In case this needs justification as a procedure, it is worth pointing out perhaps that the concept of " economic man," which underlay more than a century of economic theory, was admitted to be no more than a useful explanatory fiction. More recently, Robert Redfield has made much the same suggestion in " The Folk Society," American Journal of Sociology, 52:293-308 (January 1947) , where he puts forward the " ideal" primitive society as a mental construct which serves a useful basis for comparison.

11 . A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, " The Mother's Brother in South Africa," South African Journal of Science, 21 ( 1925) : 544-45.

12. Redfield, " The Folk Society," p. 293. 13. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, 1950) ,

p. 169. 14. Sybil Moholy-Nagy, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture

(New York, 1 957) , throughout. 15. Of course, although selfconsciousness, as I shall define it, does

tend to affect many aspects of culture at once, we certainly know of cases where cultures are highly selfconscious in some respects, yet quite unselfconscious in others. It is especially important to avoid any sug­ gestion of evolution here (to the effect that all cultures are at first un­ selfconscious, and become uniformly less so as they grow more mature) . The fact is that selfconsciousness is differently directed in different cultures ; some peoples give their closest attention to one sort of thing, some to another. This is excellently demonstrated by Marcel Mauss in " Les Techniques du corps," Journal de psychologie, 32 (1935) : 27 1-93.

16. Sumner, Folkways, pp. 3-4; Lucien Levy-Bruhl , How Natives Think (New York, 1925) , pp. 109-16, 127; Roger Brown, Words and Things (Glencoe, Ill., 1958) , pp . 272-73; B. L. Wharf, " Linguistic Factors in the Terminology of Hopi Architecture," International Journal of A merican Linguistics, 19 ( 1953): 141.

17. Redfield, " The Folk Society ," pp. 297, 299-300, 303. For further specific examples, see, for instance, Margaret Mead, " Art and Reality,"

pages 28-34 / I 9 9

College Art Journal, 2: 1 19 (May 1943) ; A. I. Richards, Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia (Oxford, 1939) , pp. 230-34, and " Huts and Hut-Building among the Bemba," Man, 50 (1950) :89 ; Raymond Firth, We the Tikopia (London, 1936) , pp. 75-80 ; Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho (Cambridge, Mass., 1946) , p. 46.

18. For a rather extreme description of this kind of education, see B. F. Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms (New York, 1938). A more balanced discussion of the growth of feeling for a skill is to be found in J. L. Gillin and J. P. Gillin, Cultural Sociology (New York, 1948) , p. 80.

1 9. Ibid. , pp. 400-3. 20. Ibid., pp. 403-4. 21. Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education (Cambridge, Mass.,

1 960), p. 24. 22. The distinction between implicit rules and explicit rules is ex­

plored at some length by E. T. Hall in The Silent Language (New York, 1959) , pp. 69-74 and 91-95.

23. It has been common, ever since the great Paris exhibition of primitive art at the turn of the century, to claim all sorts of things for the primitive artists-that they are more sensitive than we, more highly developed as artists, etc. The same thought appears in Barbara Hutton, The Unsophisticated Arts (London, 1945) . I am profoundly skeptical. The secret of the primitive form-builders' success lies not in the men themselves, but in the process of design they are accustomed to. Willy­ nilly they are caught up in a process of design which produces good form on account of the organization of the process. Similar skepticism is to be found in Ralph Linton, " Primitive Art," The Kenyon Review, 3:34-5 1 (Winter 1941) .

24. See, typically, Sumner, Folkways, p. 54 ; A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Glencoe, Ill., 1952) , pp. 7-9.

25. The archeological evidence is so thin that any pseudo-Darwinian accounts based on it cannot be more than highly general and rather doubtful fictions. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, pp. 202-3.

26. To see that this kind of assumption, implicit throughout the writings of Lewis Morgan, for example, is unjustified, see Radcliffe­ Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, p. 203.

27. The concept of homeostasis was first used extensively by W. B. Cannon in The Wisdom of the Body (London, 1932) . For a precise defini­ tion see W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain, 2nd ed. (New York, 1960) , chapter 5. And for a number of discussions see Se(f-Organizing Systems, ed. Marshall Yovits and Scott Cameron (New York, 1960) . For a de-

pages 34-38 / 2 o o

tailed descriptive discussion see also H. von Foerster, " Basic Concepts of Homeostasis," Homeostatic Mechanisms, Brookhaven Symposia in Biology, No. 10 (Upton, N.Y. , 1957) , pp . 216-42.

28. This example is based on one given in Ashby, Design for a Brain, p. 151.

29. Ibid. 30. See Chapter 9, note 4. 31. Ashby, pp. 192-204. 32. As Ashby puts it, "For the accumulation of adaptations to be

possible , the system must not be fully joined " (p. 155) . 33. This behavior of the misfits may be represented in step-function

form. See Ashby, pp. 87-90. 34. This would correspond to what Ashby calls ultrastability, ibid.,

pp. 122-37.

Chapter Four : The Unseljconscious Process

1 . By the definition of Chapter 3, p. 36. 2. Alexander Scharff, Archeologische Beitrage zur Fra�e der Entste­

hung der Hieroglyphenschrift (Munich, 1942) , and " Agypten," in Handbuch der Archaologie, ed. Walter Otto (Munich, 1937) , pp. 431-642, especially pp. 437-38.

3. L. G. Bark, " Beehive Dwellings of Apulia," Antiquity, 6 (1932) : 410. 4. Werner Kissling, " House Traditions in the Outer Hebrides,"

Man, 44 (1944) : 137 ; H. A. and B. H. Huscher, " The Hogan Builders of Colorado," Southwestern Lore, 9 ( 1943) : 1-92.

5. In the Song of Songs i . 5 we find, " I am black, but comely, 0 ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar . . . , " and Exodus contains many colorful descriptions of the tabernacle (the legendary form of the tent) : xxvi.14, " And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins," and xxvi.36, " And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple , and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework. " C. G. Peilberg, " La Tente noire ," Nationalmuseets Skrifter, Etnografisk Raekke, Vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1944) , pp . 205-9.

6. All houses in county Kerry have two doors, but you must always leave by the door you entered by, since a man who comes in through one and goes out through the other takes the house's luck away with him. Ake Campbell, " Notes on the Irish House," Folk-Liv (Stockholm) , 2 ( 1938): 192 ; E. E. Evans, " Donegal Survivals," Antiquity, 13 ( 1939) : 212.

7. Thomas Whiffen, The North-West Amazons (London, 1915) , p . 225.

pages 38-47 / 2 o I

And the same is true of many other peoples. For instance: Gunnar Landtman , " The Folk Tales of the Kiwai Papuans," Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae (Helsinki) , 47 (1917): 1 1 6, and "Papuan Magic in the Building of Houses," Acta Academiae A boensis, Humaniora, 1 (1920) : 5.

8. Margaret Mead, A n Inquiry into the Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia, Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 9 (New York, 1928) , pp. 45, 50, 57, 68-69 .

9. The blessing way rite , a collection of legends and prayers, makes a positive link between their world view and the shape of the dwelling by relating the parts of the hogan, fourfold , to the four points of the compass, and by referring to them, always, in the order of the sun's path-east, south, west, north. Thus one song describes the hogan's structure : " A white bead pole in the east, a turquoise pole in the south, an abalone pole in the west, a jet pole in the north ." The ritual involved in the hogan's use goes further still , so far that it even gives details of how ashes should be taken from the hogan fire. Berard Haile, " Some Cultural Aspects of the Navaho Hogan," mimeographed, Dept. of An­ thropology, University of Chicago , 1937, pp. 5-6, and " Why the Navaho Hogan," Primitive Man, Vol . 15, Nos. 3-4 (1942) , pp. 41-42.

10. Hiroa Te Rangi (P . H . Buck) , Samoan Material Culture, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin No. 75 (Honolulu, 1930) , p . 19 .

1 1 . L . G. Bark, " Beehive Dwellings of Apulia," p. 409. 12. William Edwards, " To Build a Hut," The South Rhodesia Native

A ffairs Department A nnual (Salisbury, Rhodesia) , No. 6 ( 1928) : 73-74. 13 . Iowerth C. Peate, The Welsh House, Honorary Society of Cymm-

rodorion (London, 1940) , pp . 183-90. 1 4. H . Frobenius, Oceanische Bautypen (Berlin, 1899) , p . 12 . 15 . Campbell, " Notes on the Irish House," p . 223. 16. Clark Wissler, " Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians,"

Anthropological Papers of the A merican Museum of History, Vol . 5, part 1 (New York, 1910) , p .·99.

17. L. G. Bark , " Beehive Dwellings of Apulia," p . 408 . 18 . A . I . Richards, " Huts and Hut-Building among the Bemba,"

Man, 50 (1950) : 89 . 19. It is true that craftsmen do appear in certain cultures which we

should want to call unselfconscious (e .g . , carpenters in the Marquesas , thatchers in South Wales) , but their effect is never more than partial. They have no monopoly on skill , but simply do what they do rather better than most other men . And while thatchers or carpenters may be employed during the construction of the house, repairs are still undertaken by the owner . The skills needed are universal, and at some level or other practiced by everyone. Ralph Linton , Material Culture of the Marquesas,

pages 47-49 / 2 o 2

Bernice P. Bishop Museum Memoirs, Vol. 8., No. 5 (Honolulu, 1923) , p. 268. Peate, The Welsh House, pp. 201-5.

20. Barr Ferree, " Climatic Influence in Primitive Architecture," The A merican Anthropologist, 3 (1890) : 149.

21. Richard King, " On the Industrial Arts of the Esquimaux," Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, 1 (1848): 281-82. Diamond Jenness, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913-1918), vol. 12: The Life of the Copper Eskimos (Ottawa, 1922), p. 63 ; J. Gabus, " La Construction des iglous chez les Padleirmiut," Bulletin de la Societe Neuchateloise de Geographie, 47 (1939-40):43-51. D. B. Marsh, " Life in a Snowhouse," Natural History, 60.2:66 (February 1951) .

22. W. G. Sumner, Folkways, p. 2. 23. Jenness , Copper Eskimos, p. 60. 24. W. McClintock, " The Blackfoot Tipi," Southwestern Museum

Leaflets, No. 5 (Los Angeles, 1936) , pp. 6-7. 25. Not only are the walls themselves daubed whenever they need to

be , but whole rooms are added and subtracted whenever the accommoda­ tion is felt to be inadequate or superfluous. Meyer Fortes, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi (London, 1949), pp . 47-50. Jadk Goody, " The Fission of Domestic Groups among the LoDagoba," ih The De­ velopment Cycle in Domestic Groups, ed. J. Goody (Cambridge, 1958) , p. 80.

26. Whiffen, The North-West Amazons, p. 41. 27. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics (New York, 1948), pp. 113-36. 28. Ibid., pp. 121-22 ; Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain (New York,

1960), pp. 100-4. 29. Strictly speaking, what we have shown concerns only the reaction

of the unselfconscious culture to misfit. We have not yet explained the occurrence of good fit in the first place. But all we need to explain it, now, is the inductive argument. We must assume that there was once a very simple situation in which forms fitted well. Once this had occurred, the tradition and directness of the unselfconscious system would have maintained the fit over all later changes in culture.

Since the moment of accidental fit may have been in the remotest prehistoric past, when the culture was in its infancy (and good fit an easy matter on account of the culture's simplicity) , the assumption is not a taxing one.

30. This is an obvious point. In another context Pericles put it nicely: " Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it." Thucydides ii.41.

31. I am indebted to E. H. Gombrich for drawing my attention to this phenomenon. The interpretation is mine.

pages 49-53 / 2 o 3

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