Engineering, Energy and Architecture Set
coordinated by
Lazaros E. Mavromatidis
Volume 1
First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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© ISTE Ltd 2017
The rights of Bernard Dugué to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942276
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-138-3
The institutional introduction of the concept of “climate change” has underlined the complex relationship between architecture, energy and engineering. On the pretext of remarkable energetic performances, the externalization of scientific calculations through architecture has transformed buildings into mass culture objects delivered to the market, while consumption is leading them to lose their relationship with the environment and, consequently, their human calling, namely the transformation of a finite volume into space. Nonetheless, architecture must represent more than an envelope. Thus, within the frame of this new global context, we should inventory the means and pieces of knowledge that will help us reinvent its esthetic and social functions, as architecture is above all a simultaneously scientific and human discipline that synchronously constitutes a plastic visual language and a conveyor of scientific information.
In the “Engineering, Energy and Architecture” set, we present works that attempt to reverse the approach established when numerous concepts and methodologies referring to the explicit relationship between architecture, energy and engineering are regarded as “undeniable” due to disciplinary compartmentalization. On the other hand, by trying to develop, through this collection, a range of research directions in several fields, we attempt to encourage readers to discover on their own whether the sterile contemporary relationship between “sustainable” architecture and engineering is nothing more than a consequence of theories or beliefs that we naturally regard as true.
The present project, which involves a collection of works about a subject as broad as the complex relationship between architecture, energy and engineering, does not aim to present in an exhaustive manner the established approaches concerning the complexity of the society-space-building-neighborhood-city-environment system. This series of works intends to be particularly original and transdisciplinary, as a set of fields (architecture, philosophy, biotechnology, climatology, engineering, sociology, anthropology, geography, esthetics) are concretely mobilized in order to outline an implicitly cross-disciplinary framework. The inclusion of informed (even inventive) notions into the teaching of architecture through an interdisciplinary approach is the first factor that can enhance the creativity of architects and the inventiveness of engineers in the global context of “climate change”.
Bernard Dugué’s essay, Information and the World Stage: From Philosophy to Science, the World of Forms and Communications, which you are holding in your hands, opens this collection. Dr Bernard Dugué is a scientist, philosopher, engineer and researcherwriter who supports scientific excellence and whose pluri-disciplinary profile is very rare. Interested in philosophy, biotechnology and engineering sciences, as well as issues of a sociological, technological and ethical order, he carries out research in several scientific fields: physics, theoretical biology, ontology, neurosciences, systems theory, epistemology, philosophy and sociology. This book, which is the result of his long interdisciplinary research, is based on the principle that “postmodernity, which has just imposed itself, has led to the emergence of a new scientific way of conceiving things”. The common thread of his philosophical writings is developed on the notion of information. Therefore, he develops a new and original concept: by emphasizing communication and natural “information”, from quanta to the cosmos, he explicitly distinguishes between two types of physics, one concerned with the arrangements of “Matter” and the other focused on the kinds of communication of this “Matter” itself, which can, according to him, lead to the creation of natural forms. His goal is to “reconcile current physics with its dazzling successes as well as its stalemates”.
As Bernard Dugué claims in his postface, “after technology, information has become an issue in our century […] as time + information + communication = emergence or morphogenesis”. From this perspective, the concepts explicitly presented in this work may fuel the radical imagination of architects, according to Castoriadis’ definition, with the aim of preserving their creativity during the phase in which forms are conceived. In the end, I think that this approach and this new concept may in turn similarly lead us to reinterpret architecture, which is now more than ever a field linked to the dazzling successes of engineering sciences as well as to its stalemates. Don’t you agree?
Dr Lazaros E. MAVROMATIDIS
Associate Professor
INSA Strasbourg
ICube Laboratory
Strasbourg
This modest essay, conceived as prolegomena, prefigures the development of new knowledge emerging in this crisis-torn period, the 21st Century. A new dawn seems to be around the corner, or at least we hope so, if we can still keep this hope alive. We are in the middle of a transition, and we are certain that an era is coming to an end. It is the modern era, after four centuries, that has reached its final stage, with its last material achievements, technological fiction and stalemates.
This essay aims to intervene transversally in order to find a way out of the dead end of knowledge by outlining some of the features of a future paradigm. The target is a break with modernity, similar to how modernity represented a break after the medieval period with its accomplished scholasticism. The new paradigm revolves around information. It involves both the understanding of societies and of the living world, as well as physical sciences. Modernity began with Galileo and Newton. Postmodernity is slowly approaching and will see the emergence of a new scientific way of conceiving things, implying a reinterpretation of current physics, with its dazzling successes as well as its stalemates.
No one understands quantum physics. Quantum gravity has reached an impasse while the arrow of time remains an enigma. However, physics is revealing things about the universe, matter and extension. It is this revelation that I intend to look for in the last chapters, starting by considering mass and charge. This line of thinking will lead us to interpret quantum physics and relativities by bringing about the theory of two kinds of physics, one focusing on arrangements and the other on communication. A physical corpus including at least six branches, rather than the usual three, is taking shape, as each type of physics resulting from modernity is split into two complementary parts, with a mechanics-arrangement component and an information-communication aspect.
First, we will define the philosophical issues that concern us by questioning technology, action, the age of machines, and then the transition towards a civilization of “inopportune communication”. A foray into biology will make us aware of a “slight shift” in the issue of information with discoveries about the “mechanics” of immunity and information at play between bacteria and viruses. Information can also be found in history, as is shown by an essay on the image act, which will be analyzed to confirm the key role of communication and “influential information”. In the following chapter, we will mention two “pathological” processes related to communication: cancer in the body and fanaticism in societies. Communication also determines a type of society, as we can remark based on some works by Habermas, a philosopher. Therefore, the central axis of a future philosophy, with the ontological difference between form and content as one of its defining principles, is gradually taking shape. This vast program will be presented in Chapter 3.
In summary, this essay, presented as prolegomena, sets out three central themes whose goal is not to give answers but to open new avenues of thought and research. The first part emphasizes the historical transition that leads from the era of machines, mechanics and technologies to the age of information, calculation and communication. Every type of knowledge is concerned with the “philosophy of information”. The second part focuses on the “shortcomings” of communication (men in society or cancer cells), which lead us to conceive the world in a post-Heideggerian way, where the ontological difference between form and content is the central theory. This universal theory will be applied to physics. Then, three chapters are dedicated to the description of some key developments in a science that is distancing itself from mechanics, while also emphasizing communication and “natural” information, from quanta to cosmos. The third part is the most important: it clearly distinguishes between two types of physics, one focused on the arrangements of “Matter” and the other on the communication processes of this “Matter” itself. These two kinds of physics allow us to introduce the notion of universal stage. The issue of time is structured on the understanding of the stage. This new interpretation of physics is coupled with an original philosophy of nature.
Classical physics has been organized around “particles” and “fields”. Postmodern and post-relativity physics will pivot around the notions of the actor’s stage and communication. A new union with nature and the cosmos will represent our target. Information organized with its echoes allows beings to communicate.
I wish to thank Lazaros Mavromatidis for the interest he has shown in my works and for giving me the opportunity to publish this essay.