ABSTRACT
Language analysts believe that there are no genuine philosophical problems, or that the
problems of philosophy, if any, are problems of linguistic usage, or of the meaning of
words. I, however, believe that there is at least one philosophical problem in which all
thinking men are interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding
1.1 NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER
On 18 June 1957 the motion ‘that Systems of Proportion make good design easier and
bad design more difficult’ was defeated, by 60 votes to 48, in a debate at the Royal
Institute of British Architects in London. The debate is remarkable less for the arguments
put forward than for its timing: just ten years after the appearance in 1947 of Colin
Rowe’s The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa.2 Rowe’s essay coincided with the start of a
period during which the theory of proportion and the application of mathematical systems
to design became a burning issue in architecture. It was followed, a few years later, by a
trio of more substantial publications: Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, in
which Rowe’s tutor Rudolf Wittkower presented Renaissance architecture in a new light,
as an abstract art of mathematical harmonies;3 Le Modulor, Le Corbusier’s exposition of
a new system of proportions derived from the golden section and the human body;4 and
Symmetry,5 an account by the eminent mathematician Hermann Weyl of the laws
governing symmetry and proportional harmony in art and nature. The summit of this
wave of enthusiasm, but also the first signs of its decline, can be identified with the
holding, in 1951, of the First International Congress on Proportion in the Arts at the
Ninth Triennale in Milan.
