RESOURCES

Metaphysics:
"The branch of philosophy that studies existence is metaphysics. Metaphysics identifies the nature of the universe as a whole. It tells men what kind of world they live in, and whether there is a supernatural dimension beyond it. It tells men whether they live in a world of solid entities, natural laws, absolute facts, or in a world of illusory fragments, unpredictable miracles, and ceaseless flux. It tells men whether the things they perceive by their senses and mind form a comprehensible reality, with which they can deal, or some kind of unreal appearance, which leaves them staring and helpless." [ OP, 14; pb 23.]
  • Existence:
    "Existence exists--and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

    If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradicition in terms: before it could identify itself as consiousness, it had to be consdious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

    Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two--existence and consciousness--are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.

    To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was--no matter what his errors--the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification." [GS, FNI, 152; pb 124]
  • Life:
    "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence--and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil."     [GS, FNI, 147; pb 121]
  • Consciousness:
    "Existence exists--and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

    If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

    Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two--existence and consciousness--are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, form the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists ant that you know it...Existence is Identity, Consicousness is Identification."     [GS, FNI, 152; pb 124]
  • Identity:
    "A thing is--what it is; its characteristics constitute its identity. An existent apart from its characteristics, would be an existent apart from its identity, which means: a nothing, a non-existent."     [Leonard Peikoff, "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ITOE, 142 ]
  • Man:
    "Man's distinctive characteristic is his type of consciousness--a consciousness able to abstract, to form concepts, to apprehend reality by a process of reason ... [The] valid definition of man, within the context of his knowledge and of all of mankind's knowledge to-date [is]: 'A rational animal.'"     [ ITOE, 58. ]

Search Website for:

| HOME | CONTACT | GUEST BOOK | SERVICES | RESOURCES |

Copyright © 1995-2009 Frederick Clifford Gibson Architect & Associates
San Francisco, California - USA

References

OED Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1971

ARCHITECTURE
AHA A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, Spiro Kostof, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1985
FCG Frederick Clifford Gibson, Architect
FWM1 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1887-1901, vol. 1, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM2 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1902-1906, vol. 2, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM3 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1907-1913, vol. 3, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM4 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1914-1923, vol. 4, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM5 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1924-1936, vol. 5, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM6 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1937-1941, vol. 6, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM7 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1942-1950, vol. 7, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM8 Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1951-1959, vol. 8, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM9 Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1889-1916, vol. 9, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM10 Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1917-1932, vol. 10, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM11 Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1933-1959, vol. 11, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM12 Frank Lloyd Wright: In His Renderings 1887-1959, vol. 12, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
MA Modern Architecture since 1900, William J R Curtis, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs (Phaidon Press Ltd., Oxford), New Jersey, 1982
OTAB On The Art of Building in Ten Books, Leon Battista Alberti, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1472.
PGA Simon and Schuster's Pocket Guide to Architecture, Patrick Nuttgens, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1980.
SCEA Santiago Calatrava, Engineering Architecture, Santiago Calatrava, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel-Boston-Berlin, 1990.
SCCW Santiago Calatrava: Complete Works, Sergio Polano, Electa, Milan, 1996
TAFW The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, William Allin Storrer, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA & London, England, 1982
TAI The Autobiography of an Idea, Louis H. Sullivan, Dover Publications, Inc, New York, 1924.
TNH The Natural House, Frank Llyod Wright, New American Library, New York, 1970.
VTBA Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius, Morris Hicky Morgan, PH.D., LL.D. trans., Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1914

PHILOSOPHY
CWA The Complete Works of Aristotle (in two volumes), by Aristotle (Ed. Jonathan Barnes), Princeton / Bollingen Serries LXXI, 1984
ABW Basic Works of Aristotle, by Aristotle (Richard McKein), Random House, April 1941
A Aristotle, by John Hermann Randall, Jr., Columbia University Press, New York, 1960.
AP Aristotle: Poetics, with the Tracatus Coislinianus, reconstruction of Poetics II, and the fragments of the On Poets, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Richard Janko trans., Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis / Cambridge, 1987
ACPR Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic, by Robert Mayhew, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
ECHU An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke (Roger Woolhouse), Penguin Classics, 1689 (1998 reprint)
CUI Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), Ayn Rand
FNI For the New Intellectual (1961), Ayn Rand
GS Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged (1957), Ayn Rand
ITOE Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979), Ayn Rand
OP The Ominous Parallels (1982), Leonard Peikoff
OPAR Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991), Leonard Peikoff 
PWNI Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982), Ayn Rand
RM The Romantic Manifesto (1975), Ayn Rand
VOS The Virtue of Selfishness : A New Concept of Egoism (1964), Ayn Rand

PHOTO CREDITS
MW Michael Wilkinson