ABSTRACT
Architecture is variously defined as a craft, as a science, as the result of the cooperation of reason and fancy, as one of the arts based on design, as an activity that is essential to the social and economic well-being of society and the happiness of its practitioners, as a source of great wonder and overpowering visual delight and also as a reminder of the transitory nature of human life. Only a few of the authors included have not turned to other disciplines to define the nature of architecture, What are called the humanities, and in particular rhetoric and poetics, also offered important paradigms for thought about the nature of architecture. Because of the central place of rhetoric in the curriculum every educated person in Europe was familiar with it, and because of its inclusive nature it could be used in the visual arts and architecture.
