THINKING MACHINES
Patrick Geddes was on a field expedition in Mexico when we has temporarily blinded. In order to continue his research, he created a system for arranging and expressing his thoughts and their relationships tactilely by folding paper into squares. Inspired by the panes of a window each one represents the variables of a problem, while their adjacencies determined their relationships and interdependencies. He utilized these thinking machines to scientifically analyze the qualitative spectrum of human experience by dividing it into a matrix of mutually beneficial relationships. Geddes' comprehensive evolution includes the individual, the society, and the environment as encapsulated by his 9 square grid of Place, Work, Folk" describing the reciprocal relationships of these components which. The implication is that economic activity is determined by the capacity of the supporting environment and the decisions of the inhabitants. Reflexively, the inhabitants' culture is developed in response to their surroundings and the work they engage in. Completing the cycle, the environment itself is shaped due to use of resources prompted by human activity and the construction of cities. The "Spirit of the City", which is to say the regional personality of its occupants, co-evolves. This is a recurring cycle where components grow, stagnate and decay. The process of change is caused by both active and passive aspects, with man either consciously guiding his daily life and remaking his surroundings, or man is himself shaped by the Place and Work. The "Notion of Life" is Geddes' most complex matrix and it is a graphic summary of his views on human life as broken down into two intertwining formulas of town-city and act-deed. According to Welter, the central four terms of the diagram; Town, School, Cloister, and City in Deed represent the Town-City formula, comprising of the four steps for transforming a town into a city. The outer frame comprises of another four terms; Acts, Facts, Thought and Deeds, constituting the Act-Deed formula whereby in four steps human lives are raised to higher levels of conscious existence. This diagram puts forward a theory of human interaction with the environment, which includes Geddes' methodology for the improvement of the human condition. The results were holistic trajectories by which societies, individuals and activities can "evolve" whilst in reciprocal relationships with each other. Geddes was seeking a scientific method for studying and comprehending unquantifiable phenomena or the relationships between phenomena. This systematic approach stands as a precursor of modern methods of systems analysis and cybernetics.1