Antoine Picon: Racionalidad Geométrica y Racionalidad Analítica

“…Looking at the history of a number of forms of engineering rationality from the Renaissance to the present, we can distinguish successive ages. For example, there seemed to be an age of classical – i.e. geometrical or Vitruvian, rationality. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, this age was supplanted by another that could be described as the age of analytical rationality. Taking the case of French engineers, I shall deal now with this transition from geometrical or Vitruvian rationality to analytical rationality…
…Since I have emphasised the importance of the representations of nature, I shall begin by evoking the change in the perception of the physical world that took place in eighteenth century France. In that period, there was a general trend towards a more dynamic perception of nature. Whereas the Classic philosophers, scientists and engineers, used to consider nature as something organised according to the laws of order and proportion, as something essentially architectonic, eighteenth?century elites were increasingly impressed by the mobility of natural elements. While Bossuet wrote that God had created the world with order and proportion, Diderot and D'Holbach declared that change and movement were the main characteristics of nature. Mobility was seen as synonym of a vital activity, while immobility became synonymous with decay and death. Efficiency was no longer linked to an ideal arrangement of means ruled by proportions; it was seen as the expression of natural dynamism. Eighteenth century urbanism and territorial planning were clearly inspired by this conception…”
Antoine Picon "Towards a History of Technological Thought" (Article published in Robert Fox (éd.), Technological change. Methods and themes in the history of technology, London, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996, pp. 37-49)
Seleccionado por el arq. Martín Lisnovsky