“Look more carefully…to find out what it really is that is repeating there …. Beyond its elements, each building [or town] is defined by certain patterns of relationships among the elements…. These relationships are not extra, but necessary to the elements… The elements themselves are patterns of relationships.”

— Christopher Alexander , book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152) About To find patterns, what does one look for?
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

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Christopher Alexander 6

architect 1936

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“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations… It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur …. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152)
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“One begins to think with that new building block, rather than with littler pieces. And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152) About what happens when one finds a pattern?
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“Robert Motherwell: Would you say that a fair statement of your position is that the 'meaning' of a work of art consists of the relations among the elements, and not the elements themselves?
Hofmann: Yes, that I would definitely say. You make a thin line and a thick line. It is the same with geometrical shapes. It is all relationship. Without all these relationships it is not possible to express higher art.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Interview in Modern Artists in America, First Series (1952), ed. R. Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and B. Karpel, p. 19, 39
1950s

“Every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there…. These patterns of events are locked in with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else; they [patterns in the space] are the atoms and molecules from which a building or a town is made.”

Christopher Alexander book The Timeless Way of Building

Cited in: Peter Coad (1992) " Object-oriented patterns http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse503/04sp/readings/designpattern.pdf." Communications of the ACM 35.9. p. 152
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

“It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkungen und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie (1925), as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Hermann Weyl" (2004)

“A pattern has an integrity independent of the medium by virtue of which you have received the information that it exists. Each of the chemical elements is a pattern integrity. Each individual is a pattern integrity. The pattern integrity of the human individual is evolutionary and not static.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Pattern Integrity 505.201 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0400.html#505
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

“Elements (lines of code) in a coincidentally-cohesive module have no relationship. Typically occurs as the result of modularizing existing code, to separate out redundant code.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Source: Structured design: fundamentals of a discipline of computer program and systems design (1979), p. 109; as cited in " Design http://swansonsoftware.com/acme/default.asp" at swansonsoftware.com Draft Version 0.9, December 3 2005.

“Understand the nature and influence of repeating patterns, from childhood experiences or even from past lives. Wthout understanding, patterns tend to repeat, unnecessarily damaging the relationship.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love

“Our emotional intelligence determines our potential for learning the practical skills that are based on its five elements: self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and adeptness in relationships”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998), p. 24

“A system is a set of two or more elements that satisfies the following three conditions. (1) The behavior of each element has an effect on the behavior of the whole. (2) The behavior of the elements and their effects on the whole are interdependent. the way each element behaves and the way it affects the whole depends on how at least one other element behaves. (3) However subgroups of the elements are formed, each has an effect on the behavior of the whole and none has an independent effect on it.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1980s, Creating the Corporate Future, 1981, p. 15-16.

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