Consciousness defines us as intelligent beings. Yet we lack a fundamental understanding of its most basic properties- how we construct metaphor, how the eye sees perspective, how the brain structures itself on the chemical level. Boundaries between fields of knowledge must be broken down before we can begin to understand the essence of what makes us human.

All of human knowledge is based on identifying and scrutinizing the relationships of parts; these units, or atoms, come together to form a given whole. Yet this structure has fundamental links to others. Conversely, each individual atom within the structure may be composed of more fundamental groupings of constituents. And so, in turn, each part must take its place as a whole, and each whole may be seen as only a part.

In this way, we have come to define all that we know or believe; it is how we understand who we are. Our relationships to others, to places, and to actions are our most intimate groundings of identity. Seaching for more, we discover larger systems with which to identify ourselves: teams, families, populations, time. Or, examining our internal structure, we may define ourselves in terms of our features, our attributes, and ultimately, even our genes.

At one extreme, all of these internal relationships can be understood solely by a reductionist analysis of their role in the overall structure. Our genes are nothing but the complex relationships of chemical elements. At the other extreme, hierarchical relationships still rely on contrast. We define our own culture only in contrast to the cultures of others and identify the bounds of a species only by its inability to reproduce with another.

It seems obvious that one would be hard pressed to find a branch of knowledge which did not consist almost entirely of a series of structures, subtended by other structures and circumscribed within still others. Absolute, independent a priori definitions are scarce, and often unnatural. Even in the world of mathematics, one of the most secure regions of human understanding, the only things we have are equalities and relationships.

Like a continually iterating fractal, we spiral into greater and greater detail, only to discover a new version of the whole.

Our freshman seminar, the "Architectonics of Nature", strove toward an understanding of these disparate parts. We examined parallel developments in artistic and scientific thought from the Renaissance to the present day, tracing transformations in the perception of knowledge from Galileo to Kant and beyond.

At a fundamental level, both artists and scientists deal with the smallest parts of an elusive whole: the artist with the basic elements of vision and perspective, the scientist with the chemical interactions between neurons that form the building blocks of consciousness.

In this way, all of art, science, and philosophy may be examined as a vast, complex, and poetic labyrinth- the architectonics of nature.

Venture into our Architectonic and question for yourself.

We are members of the Princeton University class of 1999. This website is the final project of a spring term freshman seminar entitled "The Architectonics of Nature", taught by Professor Clarence Schutt of the Chemistry Department.

Thanks to WebCounter.

Created May 1996, updated November 1996 on the occasion of the Architectonics of Nature symposium.

Front page designed by Sheri Simmons, graphics and layout by Mike Akins.

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