Bob
but then it follows that great architects have come up with the necessary and sufficient conditions, as manifested on the ground. Have any of them formulated those as principles, and written them down someplace? Or does it simply not work that way?
Peter
Peter -
It's not the job of an architect to tell you what he does. In fact, when most try they are pretty bad at it. Their job is just to do it.
Consider what makes for a great sentence.
First, there are necessary conditions that a great sentence must satisfy. It must be grammatical, punctuated, in a public language (English, French, etc.) and so forth.
If I knew what more than that I have to do to write a great sentence, I would use those sufficient conditions as my guide, write a book full of such sentences, win a Nobel Prize or two, retire to Charlottesville, raise horses and become a perfectly awful curmudgeon. Just like William Faulkner.
But that bright future does not await me because, while I know how to write sentences that satsfy all the necessary conditions, I have neither the talent nor the knowledge to go beyond that to satisfy the conditions sufficient for a great sentence.
All of which suggests to me that necessary condtions may be knowable, but sufficient conditions probably aren't. At least not in creative endeavours like gca.
Bob