Saturday, February 27, 2010

A Hint of the History of Sacred & Secular via Architecture & Mathematics

A fascinating exhibit opened recently at Yale which explores the unfolding of an increasingly secular universe birthed out of a religious cosmos, and it elucidates this turn in a rather unusual way - via the history of architecture and mathematics.

“Compass & Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500-1750 is the exhibit in question and reminds us once again that the history of theology and religion is sometimes best discovered by way of other disciplines.

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

But for all their calm preoccupation with measure and proportion, these documents, drawings, tools and models outline a dramatic revolution. The exhibition’s argument is difficult and sometimes too allusively made, but the impact is considerable. We come to see how the human cosmos might seem unchanged moment to moment, yet still reflect a radical transformation. There is a before and an after in this narrative; we live in the after, and it has come to seem so natural to us, we may not even be aware of its difference from the before.

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