Inventing the world : a public observatory for Mauna Kea

Author:

Burkart, Mark

Title:

Inventing the world : a public observatory for Mauna Kea

Year:

1997

Volume:

M.A.

Pages:

43 leaves

Subject:

Astronomical observatories social aspects Mauna Kea

Summary:

This Master's Degree Project, both practical and theoretical in its scope, was an exploration into the relationships between science, architecture and the world. These relationships are discussed within the context of the question: Is the act of Science/Architecture one of discovery or invention? Although Science is a dominant world-view that we all live within, it is widely acknowledged that this world-view is reductionist in its inherent attempt to quantify and objectify everything. In this attempt to objectify, Science strives to divorce itself from the subjective (that which pertains to culture, society, etc.) because this is the way science functions. Woven within the scientific paradigm is the Realist position: the belief in an objective truth independent of our means of knowing it. Although we live within the dominant world-view of Realism, scientists themselves understand this model to be a subjective, invented one. The Scientific method is a construct of culture. While widely acknowledged by scientists, in our day-to-day life within the paradigm this subjective component to science is forgotten. Anti-Realism, while embracing science, suggests that truth is subjective. Theories are metaphors for the real world - valuable but not necessarily true on a one-to-one basis. This is the paradox: In order to function within our current paradigm (Science) we must adopt a world-view based on Realism and suspend a world-view based on Anti-Realism (the belief in the subjectivity of Science). The question the author asks is: Can one develop an architecture which acknowledges this contradiction? Can there be an Anti-Realist architecture? - one that allows for the instruments of science and the pursuit of the 'Real' as well as Anti-Realism. There is perhaps no better architectural forum within which to explore these questions that the bastion of the Real - the observatory - and perhaps no better place than Mauna Kea which has the largest concentration of big telescopes on earth.

Collection:

Monographs