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j o u r n a l o f h i s t o r y a n d c u l t u r e can say that the dominant function of mystical representations in the two examples noted above remain distinct from the term cogito ergo sum. One major aspect of body, spirit, action and emotion is reflected in the tensions that exist in understanding of deity. This persistent pattern of disorientation can be found in Olsson’s words; like Descartes he turns cogito ergo sum into a frightening dogmatic conclusion: God—the incarnation of power is not to be trusted, for if he has changed his mind once he can do so again. Only logic is predictable, and God is not logical. Indeed God is nothing but a proper name for everything we sense is too important to ignore and too evasive to specify. ‘God’ is a pseudonym of power. 9 Ironically Olsson’s view may explain why buildings collapse or are often torn down (again like Pruitt-Igoe); is it because the power of the mortal architect, is not to be trusted? Yet another element of this remark takes over the dialectic nature of the god-complex; it becomes especially critical in the confrontation between the created thing and the creator of a thing. Inasmuch, the expression of willpower whether the indeterminate outcome is arbitrary, absurd or an abstract, has its roots in Postmodernism, Pantheism and the Promethean myth. The reactivation of the myth in architecture reflects a form of power, and an attempt to make us see the architect as some kind of ‘god- like’ person. Pantheism: fallor ergo sum. The key scholastic debate about meaning and mimesis in Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens deals with knowledge and aesthetic expression. In Latin Europe, old truths were invoked with neo-Platonism, Pythagorean Orphism and Pantheism to arrive at an ideal aesthetic expression. 10 Similarly the basic assumptions of creative reasoning were essentially grounded in the Promethean myth. Prometheus was a god, his name means forethought. Wilson Bryan Key reminds us that the disparate mental universe of Ancient Rome and Greece had profound psychological consequences for the pre-modern mind and for individual architects such as Palladio. In Key’s view, During the Middle Ages Catholic scholastic philosophers adopted Aristotelian logic, to justify and validate papal doctrine and most importantly, to verify the existence of God. Aristotelian logic became the foundation of western religious, social, and economic, legal and philosophical reasoning. 11 44
Figure 6 On the west bank of the Nile (Thebes) Deir el-Bahri the funerary temple of queen Hatshepsut, the work of architect Senmut. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Figure 8 Andrea Palladio Frontispiece of The Architecture of A. Palladio (1715) Giacomo Leoni’s translation of Andrea Palladio’s Quattro libri dell’architettura (1570). Source:http://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:The_Architecture_ of_A._Palladio_frontispiece.jpg Figure 7 Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project. St. Louis Missouri. Source http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pruitt- Igoe-collapses.jpg Figure 9 McKim Free School, Baltimore, Independent City, MD. This Greek Doric structure set the standards for the city’s early school architecture. Endowed by John McKim, the school was built in 1833. The granite facade, with its monolithic columns, is derived from the Temple of Athena and Hephasestus (The Theseum) in Athens. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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