ABSTRACT
Architectural history and history in general, was written in order to demonstrate how cultural values derived from Nature, from natural law. For classicism, nature-made objects, and by imitation, human-made objects, have an essence that endures beyond everyday modifications. There are forms that undergo little change in history; and when change occurs, these forms still retain identifiable and enduring qualities. A palazzo retains its enduring character notwithstanding the many additions and alterations it received over the centuries. Classicism developed a history of enduring ideas such as the authority of reason embodied in tradition. In this view, individual buildings, as particular historical phenomena, are contingent manifestations informed by enduring and formative ideas that gave meaning and provided the measure to empirical daily experience. Post-modernism, however, opposed the belief that there was one empirical world, one history, and it showed that there is more than one map.
