THE GENEALOGY OF MODELS: THE HAMMER AND THE

SONGS
By Sanford Kwinter
Mubashir TM

In the excerpt, the Author starts with explaining the current scenario of
design methodology, where the relationship between diagram and the worldly
correctness is largely emphasized. He continues with saying how was the concept of
“schema” used by Kant to theorize Newtonian reality in 18th century and the
concept of diagram as theory of material reality in the 20th century. But this Kantian-
Newtonian model was later rejected by the great thinker Goethe in favor of the
modern genetic interpretation of form. Goethe was considered as father of the
modern concept of diagram. His work can explain the ecological approach he did
in his works also visible in his scientific writings. This in turn helped us to understand
diagram do not produce forms, rather diagrams emit formative and organizational
influence which subsequently give a concrete reality about the form. The Diagrams
are fundamentally geometric in nature.

In the view of Kant, the world of experience was either material or

formal component where material refers qualities found n object whereas formal
appears to be on the side of the subjective, corresponding to schema which is filled
with data acquired from the outside through senses. For him the terms are
inseparable such as subject and object, perception and reality, schema and senses.
Without this, the world would have fallen into shapeless abstraction.

In the coming part, the author explained the topology and how it is not only
to introduce the shifting, connected meshwork in which form and matter play out
their alternating struggle and their dance, but also to insist the diagram to be
reduction of the manifold but rather as contraction. This is important to understand
because once the complicated or enfolded things manipulate, it can itself harbor
the capacity to unfold or ‘explicate’ as author said.

The author then discusses about the modern position where his and Brian
Boigon developed article “Five Appliances for the Alphabetical City” of 1989. the
concept of diagram is explained as embedded entity, separate yet indissociable
from the concrete work-event that it animates and in which it resided. HE then raises
a question that how you isolate diagram from concrete event which was answered
by Deleuze by a class of phenomena that he calls abstract machines. It is distinct
from material realty yet they are fully functional.

The effect of postwar configuration of diagrammatism which was

an extraordinary increase in the belief and application of science and engineering
in everyday life which created invisible material logic to explain and general reality.
This advancement further helped in theoretical and practical advances in
information science. The cybernetics and information science helps us to
understand dynamic, algorithmic nature of diagrams in the present world. The
primary phenomena such as integration, organization, and coordination are
targeted by cybernetics. Integrations helps us to figure out the connection between
surrounding environment with function which are untapped. Organization relies
notion of patter, to explain how it can arise through internal controls and how these
factors are sustained. Coordination explains how things actually move and transition
smoothly between variety of states emitting temporal rhythmic and coherent
behaviors.

In conclusion, the author ask the question which naturally arises whether the
diagram is scientific and explanatory or literally and illocutionary. He thinks that there
wont a perfect answer for this as it depends upon of various factors. The diagram, in
turn can be describes as a function of will not based on facts. He says that diagrams
must be conceived as songs as well as hammers in the end to show the power of
diagrams.