Citizens

Citizens 

I've been listening to a learned podcast about the future of the world and humanity: politicians, scientists and others seem to agree not just on the challenges that face us but also on the way forward. Either mildly pessimistic or moderately optimistic, they tend to focus on the citizen. Their argument is that if the citizen is aware of the problems and the effects of their choices, then improvement should be expected - even salvation.
I'm filled with doubts. Even if we managed to agree on a common approach, are we powerful enough as citizens? We're far from equal in any society. The one is a fearful employee and the other a powerful employer. Each has their own impact and between the individual citizen and the abstract group of society there are intervening layers composed of interests and hence related to power. How can we ignore them and believe that citizens as voters, consumers, taxpayers and the like can achieve enough just by their choices? Our choices are shaped by the intervening layers, either on purpose or by accident. It's the reciprocal relations between the individuals and these layers (which include ideologies, lifestyles, ethnicities etc.) that I'd focus rather than passing buck directly to citizens.

Lysenko, Lombroso, Lamarck

Lysenko, Lombroso, Lamarck

Lysenko is a prime example of what can go wrong in science when it becomes entangled in politics. As the developer of a biology for the Soviet ideology that denounced bourgeois, capitalist falsehoods, he is considered responsible not only for scientific backwardness (including through persecution, imprisonment and execution of scientific opponents) but also widespread famine in the Soviet Union.

Lombroso did not flourish under a totalitarian regime but became quite instrumental in the oppression of people by giving police and the judiciary "scientific" reasons for considering someone a criminal on the basis of their appearance. Interestingly, this is not what Soviet scientists would denounce as bourgeois falsehoods.

Lamarck was by comparison just wrong in believing that acquired characteristics are inherited, although this is nowadays under partial reconsideration: there may be some scope for soft inheritance, after all. In any case, his other contributions to science have retained their validity. For example, he is credited with recognising the difference between insects and arachnids (and for recognising that spiders have eight legs rather than six, as it was believed by those who had read Aristotle apparently wrongly).

What connects the three "L"s for me is their fall from grace as scientific authorities, as well as their easy connection to societal priorities, either political or ideological. Authorities are troublesome because quite often everything they claim is taken for granted, even if it's a mere opinion. However, more than authorities what scares me is the ease with which we promote societal priorities to unassailable truths. In politics this is often a problem we gloss over but in science we don't even talk about it. On the contrary, we tailor research to match such arbitrariness and change without a moment's thought when new opportunities arise.

What is architecture?

What is architecture? 

Is architecture what architects do, make, think, believe? Boring old question and the answer is obviously not: architecture is possible without architects (whether these are defined by training or inclination). One doesn't even have to be a builder to produce architecture (as in vernacular traditions). It's probably safer to define architecture as a fundamental human tendency and capacity, similarly to poetry, music or technology: we need architecture to add meaning to the environments we construct and inhabit, to move beyond the basic yet critical achievement of shelter and accommodation. Architecture should be considered as a societal and cultural layer that architects service rather than determine. I've been told that only a minority of buildings is designed by architects, yet practically every building has architectural aspirations, for example decoration in a possibly recognisable architectural style.

This doesn't make architects superfluous or irrelevant; they remain custodians of architecture, which gives them the opportunity to introduce and interpret, to redirect and safeguard - and they can do it, provide it they manage to avoid hubris: they shouldn't believe they're entitled to do whatever they want, that they are infallible, as was the case with high-rise council flats in post-World War 2 England. These did not develop as social reformers and architects naively believed, bringing much discredit to British modernism, which was ironically following rather interesting directions at the time (late modernism).