I’m getting preoccupied by the parallels between the design theorist Christopher Alexander’s metaphysics of form and Margaret’s Archer morphogenetic approach. The best critique of Archer I’ve read is Mouzelis arguing that she systematically prioritises time over space, leading her to neglect the spatialised exercise over power. I’m increasingly wondering if Alexander’s (somewhat power-blind, it seems to me) architectural theory of morphogenesis as a spatialised process, could be integrated into Archer’s morphogenetic approach.
From Christopher Alexander’s The Process of Creating Life, pg 509:
Why is freedom associated with the morphogenetic character of social processes? Because it is the shape-creating, organization-generating, aspect of process which ultimately allows people to do what they want, what they desire, what they need, and what is deeply adapted to life as it is lived and to experience as it is felt. The humanity of the environment comes about only when the processes are morphogenetic, are whole-seeking, are placed in a context that gradually allows people to work towards a living whole in which each person plays a part. If this point is not clear from what you have read in this book, please read Book 1, chapter 10, to understand more fully what I mean.
I believe we may take on this task, collectively, and can gain effective, instrumental knowledge of our generative system, and thus some measure of awareness and control over the system of processes that generates the world. I choose to define society as that system which creates the human world, and say that its primary ongoing function, and the criterion we should use to judge it by, is its capacity to create and re-create a living world for us.
