Grab-Bag 3: "The Fountainhead: Out with the Old (Screw You, Aristotle)"
The Fountainhead, part 1, chapter 1
"Last week, we learned that Howard Roark had been expelled from architectural college for refusing to do his homework. In this installment, he explains just why he finds it so objectionable to design buildings in classical style:
If it hasn't become obvious yet (it will), I am most of the time a proponent of exactly one thing, and that is process (or Process or PROCESS, depending on how emphatic I'm feeling). As in the method of working through a question with intention and attention, holding yourself to a standard of good-faith inquiry where you will point out and smooth out your own internal contradictions, fallacies, ignored alternatives, etc. etc. until you can bang along a chain of sincere reasoning to whatever conclusion you came up with. (And if anything in that chain is shown to be faulty, you will keep a stand-by willingness to fix it or start over as need be.) The reason it's awesome: if someone else has done Process, you'll be able to either follow along with their thoughts to the conclusion, or point out exactly where you differ (or just have questions). You can then communicate further, maybe understand better, the world is the richer for an honest collaborative effort.
Today's featured analysis I consider an epic example of undertaken Process: a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the core ideas within Ayn Rand's [SUPER LONG] book The Fountainhead (and a follow-up to a similar dissection of Rand's later [**SUPER** LONG] opus, Atlas Shrugged). The author posts one new installment each week, and if you count both books this project has literally been going on for YEARS — each week with points, anticipated counterpoints, reference to relevant information, all that good stuff. (Still a casual free-time effort, so not intensely rigorous in an academic sense, but still laying the thoughts out clearly so you can say where you'd differ if you did.)
[NOTE ON THE BOOKS THEMSELVES: If you have not read or not heard of Rand's works, they are...frustrating. Economic fairy tales with cardboard characters, basically, but ambitious, and with flashes of really addictive writing...like Twilight if the vampires were a financial symbol within a near-mystic work-based ideology.]
My take on these particular works jives with the author's ultimate position, which is that they are appealing but inherently ludicrous. But as with all good examples of Process, you are invited to check out the source material yourself, follow along, see where you spot any 'wrong spots'/inconsistencies in the analysis and/or original text that you'd like to look into further — disagree, and point out where! Otherwise, just behold several years of someone's life spent on *really* trying to engage with a written work, because that's a beautiful thing.
"Last week, we learned that Howard Roark had been expelled from architectural college for refusing to do his homework. In this installment, he explains just why he finds it so objectionable to design buildings in classical style:
“But I don’t understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?” He pointed to the picture of the Parthenon.One thing is for sure: Ayn Rand really hates skeuomorphism."
“That,” said the Dean, “is the Parthenon.”
“So it is.”
“I haven’t the time to waste on silly questions.”
“All right, then.” Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked to the picture. “Shall I tell you what’s rotten about it? …The famous flutings on the famous columns — what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood — when columns were made of wood, only these aren’t, they’re marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?”
-Excerpt from Adam Lee's series on The Fountainhead
(And here's a link to the beginning of that essay series)
~ ○ ○ ○ ~
If it hasn't become obvious yet (it will), I am most of the time a proponent of exactly one thing, and that is process (or Process or PROCESS, depending on how emphatic I'm feeling). As in the method of working through a question with intention and attention, holding yourself to a standard of good-faith inquiry where you will point out and smooth out your own internal contradictions, fallacies, ignored alternatives, etc. etc. until you can bang along a chain of sincere reasoning to whatever conclusion you came up with. (And if anything in that chain is shown to be faulty, you will keep a stand-by willingness to fix it or start over as need be.) The reason it's awesome: if someone else has done Process, you'll be able to either follow along with their thoughts to the conclusion, or point out exactly where you differ (or just have questions). You can then communicate further, maybe understand better, the world is the richer for an honest collaborative effort.
Today's featured analysis I consider an epic example of undertaken Process: a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the core ideas within Ayn Rand's [SUPER LONG] book The Fountainhead (and a follow-up to a similar dissection of Rand's later [**SUPER** LONG] opus, Atlas Shrugged). The author posts one new installment each week, and if you count both books this project has literally been going on for YEARS — each week with points, anticipated counterpoints, reference to relevant information, all that good stuff. (Still a casual free-time effort, so not intensely rigorous in an academic sense, but still laying the thoughts out clearly so you can say where you'd differ if you did.)
[NOTE ON THE BOOKS THEMSELVES: If you have not read or not heard of Rand's works, they are...frustrating. Economic fairy tales with cardboard characters, basically, but ambitious, and with flashes of really addictive writing...like Twilight if the vampires were a financial symbol within a near-mystic work-based ideology.]
My take on these particular works jives with the author's ultimate position, which is that they are appealing but inherently ludicrous. But as with all good examples of Process, you are invited to check out the source material yourself, follow along, see where you spot any 'wrong spots'/inconsistencies in the analysis and/or original text that you'd like to look into further — disagree, and point out where! Otherwise, just behold several years of someone's life spent on *really* trying to engage with a written work, because that's a beautiful thing.