Re: bats & battalions (was Benton and Kinman)

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Philidor (philidor11@snet.net) wrote:

<There is a reason for saving tradition.  It works.  Remember that priestess 
sitting alone in a
Nile temple, the final flower in the pagan tradition that had flowed from the 
earliest times,
gathering and accumulating the fertile insights that sometimes nurtued science 
and art, that
brought consolation and understanding.  She sat awaiting the mob seeking to 
destroy what they no
longer chose to accept, carrying their scythes, ready to tear down walls 
because their timeless
solidity reproached the flawed view that no glimpse of truth could be found in 
an alternative, and
believed.  How many of us would silently rise and go to the doorway of that 
temple, even though we
did not accept her philosophy, and stand in solidarity with the human effort, 
the value to real
lives lived, that she alone upheld.>

  I think there's a better analogy to the situation, Brian, though you may not 
agree with it.

  Imagine only the edifice, built with asbestos and lead-based paint and pipes. 
The edifice is
causing risks to the inhabitants, health-issues, problems. Making life hard. 
The building, as we
know, is causing more problems than it is allowing to be solved. It was 
traditional to build them,
as we know, but eventually, the risks built up until the hazards caused such 
problems that the
board of helth decided the building was no longer habitable. It was torn down, 
and a new building
was erected in its place. The new building, athwart the traditional structure, 
was modular and
allowed more more flexibility of use. The parts no longer contributed to the 
degradation of the
health of it's inhabitants.

<I'd like to think, Tim, that you'd be one of those standing before the door to 
reproach the mob. 
And ask them to prove that their views are in any wise so much better that the 
remarkable and 
still entirely useful old edifice should be destroyed.>

  I'd like to think of myself as an architect. Even Lloyd Wright made mistakes, 
and one of his
greatest works is crumbling as we speak. But architecture improves over time by 
learning from his
mistakes, not by building on top of previous failiures. Okay, Linné was a good 
man, had a vision,
was a genius. In the time and age, it was a break through. Time moves on. We 
see life as anagenic,
not static. Classification schema and methods must change as a result, because 
the old ways, the
traditional ways, are only preserving the asbestos and lead buildings of the 
past. They are
condemned. Let them die.


=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhr-gen-ti-na
  Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Pampas!!!!

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