The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture — John Shaqi
The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and ArchitectureBragdon, Claude Fayette
Philosophy
The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture
Bragdon, Claude Fayette
Architecture; Theosophy
The ideas in regard to time and space are those commonly current
in the world until the advent of the Theory of Relativity. To a
generation brought up on Einstein and Ouspensky they are bound to
appear "lower dimensional." Merely to state this fact is to deal
with it to the extent it needs to be dealt with. The integrity of my
argument is not impaired by these new views.
The one important influence that has operated to modify my opinions
concerning the mathematical basis of the arts of space has been the
discoveries of Mr. Jay Hambidge with regard to the practice of the
Greeks in these matters, as exemplified in their temples and their
ceramics, and named by him _Dynamic Symmetry_.
In tracing everything back to the logarithmic spiral (which embodies
the principle of extreme and mean ratios) I consider that Mr. Hambidge
has made one of those generalizations which reorganizes the old
knowledge and organizes the new. It would be only natural if in his
immersion in his idea he overworks it, but Mr. Hambidge is a man of
such intellectual integrity and thoroughness of method that he may be
trusted not to warp the facts to fit his theories. The truth of the
matter is that the entire field of research into the mathematics of
Beauty is of such richness that wherever a man plants his metaphysical
spade he is sure to come upon "pay dirt." _The_ _Beautiful Necessity_
represents the result of my own prospecting; _Dynamic Symmetry_
represents the result of his. If at any point our findings appear to
conflict, it is less likely that one or the other of us is mistaken
than that each is right from his own point of view. Be that as it may,
I should be the last man in the world to differ from Mr. Hambidge,
for if he convicted me of every conceivable error his work would still
remain the greatest justification and confirmation of my fundamental
contention--that art is an expression of the _world order_ and
is therefore orderly, organic; subject to mathematical law, and
susceptible of mathematical analysis.
CLAUDE BRAGDON
Rochester, N.Y.
April, 1922
I
THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE
One of the advantages of a thorough assimilation of what may be called
the theosophic idea is that it can be applied with advantage to every
department of knowledge and of human activity: like the key to a
cryptogram it renders clear and simple that which before seemed
intricate and obscure. Let us apply this key to the subject of art,
and to the art of architecture in particular, and see if by so
doing we may not learn more of art than we knew before, and more of
theosophy too.
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