American Scientist, July/August, 1996
Architecture and Evolution [Excerpts]
In the debate over adaptation, which view is best served
by the metaphors of the "spandrels" of San Marco and the
bosses of King's College?
By Robert Mark. (Mark, professor of civil engineering and
architecture at Princeton University, has pioneered the
application of modern engineering modeling for the study of
historical buildings.)
Domes of Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice have become the
unlikely subjects of a continuing debate conceming the role
of adaptation in evolutionary theory. Evolutionists Stephen
Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin proposed in 1979 an
architectural metaphor to elucidate their view that not all
aspects of form have immediate biological utility. They
cited the decoration of the "spandrels" -- the triangular
areas between Saint Mark's arches and the domes -- as well
as the embellished bosses in the vaults of King's College
Chapel in Cambridge, as architectural by-products,
analogous to the nose furnishing support to spectacles.
Critics, most notably philosopher Daniel Dennett (in
*Darwin's Dangerous Idea*), have taken Gould and Lewontin
to task for both the architectural elements chosen and
their biological speculations. Meanwhile, experimental and
numerical modeling techniques have recently made it
possible to structurally analyze the complex elements of
historical architecture. The author applies such knowledge
to the function of spandrels, bosses amd similar
architectural elements, judging their metaphoric
suitability to the evolutionary debate.
"Gould and Lewontin's misapplication of the term spandrel
for pendentive perhaps implies a wider latitude of design
choice than they intended for their analogy. But Dennett's
critique of the architectural basis of the analogy goes
even further astray because he slights the technical
rationale of the architectural elements in question. He is
not alone in this."
"My colleague David Billington and I have pointed out that
the problem is widespread both in historical analysis and
in current architectural theory: 'Following art history,
contemporary writing on architecture tends to focus on
formal analysis where visual ideas dominate the discussion
of the origin and meaning of style. Technology is rarely
touched upon, and structure, although generally understood
as necessary, is hardly seen as a legitimate giver of form,
even for large-scale building.' "
"To his credit, Dennett does not focus on style. But his
treatment of crucial structural elements as a kind of
surface decoration that can be altered at will -- "You have
to put something there to hold up the dome some shape or
other, you decide which" -- ignores the years, or in some
cases even centuries, of construction experience that led
to their incorporation in historic buildings."
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