Architectonic (pronounced ahr-ki-tek-ton-ik)
(1) Of
or pertaining to the principles of architecture, design and construction.
(2) In
figurative use in the social sciences (especially political science and
sociology), those things foundational or fundamental; supporting the structure
of a morality, society, or culture.
(3) As
a descriptor outside the field of architecture, denoting, relating to, or
having architectural qualities, especially in its highly organized manner or
technique of structure.
(4) In
metaphysics, of or relating to the systematic classification of the totality of
knowledge.
(5) In
artistic composition, having a clearly defined structure, especially one
artistically pleasing.
1635-1645
From the Latin architectonicus (of architecture), from the Ancient Greek ἀρχιτεκτονικός (arkhitektonikós) (pertaining to a
master builder), from ἀρχιτέκτων
(arkhitéktōn) (architect). Interestingly,
in surviving Greek texts, the most commonly-used forms appears to be arkhitekton
(chief workman). As technology improved
it became possible to observe physical objects at smaller scales, even down to
the sub-atomic level. What was seen was
of course inherently structural so architectonic was co-opted by many fields
which created their own words including receptorarchitectonic (in anatomy &
biology, relating to the architectonics of receptors, neuroarchitectonic (the
architectonics of nerves and the nervous system) and nanoarchitectonic (the design
of nanotechnology devices or the architectonic of nanoscale architecture) and politico-architectonic
(in structuralism and urban planning, the analysis of purpose of individual
elements). The adjective architectonical
dates from the 1590s. Architectonic is a
noun & adjective, architectonically is an adverb and architectonical is an
adjective; the noun plural is architectonics.
In
English, use in the metaphysical sense (pertaining to systematization of
knowledge) dates only from 1801, the allusions to the origins in Antiquity something
of a retrospective Enlightenment discovery.
The division of what in Antiquity tended to be called “the sciences” (ie
about any field of knowledge to which any form of method could be applied) into
ancillary and architectonic is often described as Aristotelian because it was in
the surviving texts of Aristotle (384-322 BC) that the concept is both so
prevalent and obvious but it was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) who, in Critique of Pure Reason (1781), provided
framework in its modern understanding, architectonics being the study both of a
system and the processes of its construction.
Kant’s contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), was a
philosopher who contributed much to the understanding of the implications of
the architectonic, perhaps because as well as his interest in metaphysics,
he was a composer and something of a critic of architecture.
Six of the Painterly Architectonic set (1916-1918) in oil by Lyubov Popova (1889-1924).
Painterly
Architectonic was a series of works by Russian & Soviet avant-garde artist Lyubov
Popova. Thematically, she explored the
effects of color and shape on individual parts of a whole, overlaying the
representations of the objects after the manner of collage. The paintings distort space within the square
and rectangular frames, right angles, vertical and horizontal lines almost all
shunned in seas of slants and diagonals.
Travelling in Western Europe in the years before World War I (1914-1918), Popova was
stunned by the Cubist and Futurist works she saw in France & Italy and these
ideas she took back to Moscow, her focus on the interrelationships between
individual parts. In 1916 Popova declared
herself a "Suprematist", a term coined a year earlier by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935)
another member of the Russian avant-garde who explained it described an art
which rejected painting’s historic devotion to representation, focusing instead
on the supremacy of pure artistic feeling. After the October Revolution in 1917, it
became a movement, many artists believing a revolutionary society demanded a
radically new artistic language. In that
they were probably right but in comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) time, they would find the
vocabulary was limited.
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