SCIENTISM 21 Scientism: The Breeding Ground for Current Architectural Trends - or - Towards an Architectural Monoculture AMY CATANIA KULPER University of Michigan “Science, at its core, is simply a method of practi- not to a singular predecessor, but to many possible cal logic that tests hypotheses against experience. subsequent movements. The value of this legacy is Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific its spirit of inclusion, the conviction that many voic- method can answer are the most important ques- es have a place at architectural discourse’s table. tions human beings can ask, and that the picture of However, detracting from these diverse offerings, is the world yielded by science is a better approxima- the sinking feeling that the discipline of architecture tion to reality than any other.” - John Michael Greer has no critical mass, that it lacks direction, and that it continues to wallow in an interregnum of ‘any- “Scientism is a scientific worldview that encompass- thing goes.’ This disciplinary dilemma is given insti- es natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews tutional expression in the academy, which currently supernatural and paranormal speculations, and em- operates under two pervasive models: the inclusive braces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science.” model that features diverse pedagogical positions, - Michael Shermer, Scientific American but rarely articulates what this diversity is in the service of; and the single-interest model in which “Put bluntly, the I and the WE were colonialised by one position is intensified, valued, and advanced, the IT. The Good and the Beautiful were overtaken however, the depth of this inquiry often comes at by a growth in monological Truth.... Full of itself and flush with stunning victories, empirical science be- the cost of a potentially myopic worldview. came scientism, the belief that there is no reality save that revealed by science, and no truth save Amidst this institutional divide and this directional that which science delivers.” indecision enters scientism, the conviction that sci- - Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul entific logics and values are critical in answering “There is physics, and there is stamp-collecting....” the most pressing questions facing the discipline of - Ernst Rutherford, physicist architecture. So, how do we differentiate between scientific and scientistic tendencies currently oper- THE PLURALISTIC LEGACY OF THE ating within the discipline of architecture? When is LINGUISTIC PARADIGMS AND THE science a useful analogical or methodological engine AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE to architectural design, and when does it exert a he- gemonic influence, marginalizing those discursive di- Of the many things poetics, semiotics and decon- mensions that lack empirical legibility? In his theori- struction put on the table for the discipline of archi- zation of scientism, Tom Sorrel articulates five theses tecture, it can be argued that their abiding legacy is that access scientism within the tradition of scientific less about the language of architecture per se, and empiricism: “(1) science is unified; (2) there are no more concerned with the ethos of pluralism. When limits to science; (3) science has been enormously ‘signifier’ and ‘signified,’ ‘authorship,’ ‘syntax,’ and successful at prediction, explanation, and control; ‘translation’ became exhausted tropes in the archi- (4) the methods of science confer objectivity on sci- tect’s and theorist’s toolbox, the residue pointed, entific results; and (5) science has been beneficial 22 WHERE DO YOU STAND for human beings.”1 Sorrel’s theses provide critical “The introduction of computers into architecture points of departure for locating scientism within the during the past two decades has helped reduce practices and theories of architecture. architectural discourse to issues of instrumental- ity. The most popular discussions presume the im- The supposition that science is unified must be portance of this so-called paradigm shift and focus placed in the context of the pluralistic humani- on the potential and limitations of this instrument, ties. The virtue of empiricism is its claim to pro- aiding the perpetuation of the dichotomy. Thus the- duce clear and verifiable truths, that when linked oretical discourse tends to remain caught up in in- to other such truths contribute to a unified system strumental issues of form (innovation) and produc- of knowledge, or epistemology. Though this sys- tion (efficiency), while the humanistic dimension of temization has its virtues, a decided drawback is architecture is further jeopardized and educational what Steven Connors calls its “manufactured am- programs become increasingly vocational.”4 nesia of things.”2 The criteria of clarity and veri- fiability privilege only the quantifiable aspects of A belief in the limitlessness of science can also be things, and thus necessarily forget much of what is found in the various logics deployed by architects, experienced. Bruno Latour alludes to this narrowed from form-finding algorithms and scripting practic- and exclusionary epistemological focus when he es, to parametric design and Building Information opines, “[e]pistemology is a professional hazard of Modeling (BIM). These logics share as a common first class air-conditioned train travel.”3 This sys- denominator the conceit that architectural “prob- tematic front of scientism, though appealing to ar- lems” can be “solved” mathematically. What archi- chitecture as a meta- narrative with the potential tecture’s systems, tools and logics eschew are the to gather up our discipline’s pluralistic trajectories, qualitative dimensions of experience (the sensual, is achieved at the cost of suppressing the poetic, the ephemeral, the transitory), the possibility for ethical, and experiential dimensions of our creative poetics, and ultimately, humanity. In a recent AD production. Complicating matters even further, the article entitled “Digital Solipsism” Neil Spiller writes: choice of a unifying epistemology rarely comes “Much recent architecture, especially the well- with a disclaimer or fine print about what is explic- known examples, has been devoid of humanity and itly excluded. panders to a need for ever more gratuitous complex surfaces and structures. This justifies or obscures The pervasive and well-worn claim that there are their simple, apolitical and vacuous objectives. Our no limits to science goes a long way towards ex- short-sightedness caused by the development of plaining architecture’s current capitulation to ever more dexterous ‘printing’ technology, the ubiq- technological imperatives. However, there are a uity of global capitalism and the myth of the deity number of territories within the discipline of archi- architect has encouraged a great ‘forgetting’ – a for- tecture that settle comfortably within the reach of getting that has subtracted the humanity from the the long arm of science’s limitless epistemological architectural products of our era.”5 prowess. Architecture’s systems, tools, and logics owe a debt of gratitude to such scientific trans- When Sorrel’s third thesis of scientism - that sci- gressions. Architectural systems-thinking at the ence has been enormously successful at predic- structural, mechanical, and material levels exploit tion, explanation, and control – takes root within science’s limitless capacities in everything from di- the discipline of architecture, it occasions a discur- agrams of structural efficiency, to HVAC logics, to sive shift from questions of ‘what?’ to questions performative and responsive skins. The tools that of ‘how?’ Here, scientism’s intrusion propagates a we use for design, from graphite and triangles to false choice between content and technique, and the sophisticated machinery of digital fabrication, when the criteria for valuation are prediction, expla- are instruments that simultaneously instrumental- nation, and control, the deck is decidedly stacked ize their users. Alberto Péréz-Gomez argues that against content. In her seminal text, The Human architecture’s digital revolution polarized the disci- Condition of 1958, Hannah Arendt makes a distinc- pline into disparate camps of fine arts and applied tion that is critical to this prioritization of technique sciences, while these new tools instrumentalize the in architectural discourse. Here, Arendt describes discipline. He writes: the innate human capacity to understand the dis- tinction between utility and meaningfulness, ex- SCIENTISM 23 pressed linguistically by distinguishing between “in out the notion of the mind as mirror, the notion of order to” and “for the sake of.” Arendt’s critique of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not utilitarianism is that it gets caught in “an unending have suggested itself.”8 Here, Rorty articulates phi- chain of means and ends without ever arriving at a losophy’s dilemma, a dilemma shared by architec- principle which could justify the category of means ture. It is not that our representations are becom- and ends, that is, utility itself.”6 Ultimately she ar- ing increasingly realistic that is problematic, but gues that the “in order to” has become the content rather that this tautological over- determination is of the “for the sake of,” or more succinctly, that being equated with the construction of disciplinary “utility established as meaning generates meaning- knowledge. Two examples