Matter and Change

“The beautiful is a manifestation of natural laws that otherwise had remained hidden forever.” - Goethe

Two views of metamorphosis are presented in these articles. One is that of the shape shifting discrete change, and the other of a continuous, organic presence of change. The concept of metamorphosis is traced by Warner from Ovid to Darwin. “The concept has itself metamorphosed through history, partly as a result of its encounter with science – expecially with the theory of evolution. It now evokes images not just of shape shifting but of a smooth organic unfolding of forms in time and space.” (Warner, 18)

Frazer talks of an evolutionary architecture whose content is not in expression, but in a code-script. Analogous to DNA building blocks. It is not the expression that evolves, but the coding. The expression is a result. ‘genetic language of architecture’ is an evolving continuous phenomena - metamorphic. “Our architectural model, considered as a form of artificial life, also contains coded manufacturing which are environmentally dependent, but as in the real world model it is only the code-script which evolves.”( Frazer, 14) Frazer uses the computer to test a simple rule to its evolution into form. “Very large numbers of evolutionary steps can be generated in a short space of time, and the emergent forms are often unexpected.” (Frazer, 9) These forms may very well be the type of beauty Goethe was speaking of. While the intense computation in Frazers method has come under scrutiny, he assures us that the seed, the Cotyledon, if you will, is human, sublime. “The prototyping, modeling, testing, evaluation and evolution all use the formidable power of the computer, but the initial spark comes from human creativity.” (Frazer, 19)

In an alternative presentation of metamorphosis, we see a less idealized vision of change is presented in the idea of entropy. Like Humpty Dumpty, entropy represents a “…closed system which eventually deteriorates and starts to break apart and there’s no way that you can really piece it back together again… T]he irreversible process will be in a sense metamorphosed, it is evolutionary, but it is not evolutionary in terms of any idealism.” (Smithson, 1-2)

Smithson echoes sentiments similar to Gould’s non-idealistic view of evolution. “I don’t think things go in cycles. I think things just change from one situation to the next, there’s really no return.” (Smithson, 4)

Warner’s sentiments in recalling the shape-shifting metamorphoses of myth (Greek not Russian) are a stark contrast. “The core of this strange and ghostly myth offers the promise of another chance at happiness… [Metamorphosis] governs personal fate and identity that in some profound way, you are what you make yourself.” (Warner, 15) But given recent development in thinking, Warner even admits the conflicts now apparent in the ‘story of the unified integral self’ (ibid. 29)

I’m fascinated how computational evolutionary theory leads a tortuous path to Heraclitus. Really the first dialectic philosopher, he is famous for allegedly claiming you can’t cross the same river twice. In an evolutionary view, surely one can’t cross the same river twice because one is not the same, and the river is not the same, though both participate in a continuous identity. One is the same one but one is always changing. In it’s most basic form, there is matter and there is change. Smithson accepts this notion of change as constant, unavoidable, irreparable. So as our cites go through irreparable changes, so to must the code-script for those cites change and respond to the also changing needs. Our cites too could benefit from the metaphor of digital genetics.