Empiricism in Architecture

In the middle of the eighteenth century, studies of art and beauty were not pursued separately from such traditional disciplines as logic, moral philosophy and natural science. The interdisciplinary character of this new knowledge is best explained in the fact that many of the contributors were philosophers, scientists, economists, ministers and educators at universities. It was a logical outcome that, to quote Ernst Cassirer, ‘the aesthetic problem remains in constant flux; and constant variations take place in the significance of the basic concepts depending on the choice of starting-point and on the predominance of the psychological, the logical, or the ethical interest’. While the disciplinary classification and attempt of the intellectual emancipation gradually progressed, the theoretical foundation of the aesthetic quest continued to be tied in with the principles of different disciplines. It was in this interdisciplinary character of aesthetic thought that eighteenth-century aesthetic creativity in Britain found its intricate theoretical background in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The real nature of Enlightenment thinking was never formulated into particular absolute doctrines, axioms and theorems. It did not limit its basis within a systematic doctrinal structure. Instead, it was clarified in the process or manner of thought, i.e. doubting and examining, seeking, tearing down and building up. Just as the age of the Enlightenment put the workings of the mind in question, so it was the process of artistic creation, criticism and appreciation to which the aesthetic quest of this movement bent its particular attention.