“Dao”, the Name of the Nameless Way
The first two phrases of the text “道德经” (“Daodejing”, or “Tao Te Ching”) is about the nameless nature of the “way” (道, dao). Wait, why are we talking about an ancient text on an ancient philosophical school of thought? Well, the funny thing is, this nameless quality seems to crop up once in a while in the most unexpected places.
So, for instance, Christopher Alexander, definitely of the Western tradition, a Christian, from all the materials I can find about him, says the following:
“To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name.”
He is talking about the timeless way of building (structures). That basically is “Dao”. He obviously knew about Daoism as he did read the two foundational texts of Daoism. If you care about the programming angle, and from his architectural teachings we got software design patterns.
But what exactly was he talking about? Actually, it is hard to pin down, given that he changed his mind a few times over the years. For me, his ideas in each of the periods he went through are all fascinating. However, through the sixty odd years of his thinking, the same goal is there: to seek the wholeness of life and the Earth. And to him, eventually, ultimately, or primarily, it is hard for me to tell, the presence of God. Through architecture.
As far as I am concerned, his basic thinking has three periods, through the main books he wrote in the three periods, they are
- Notes on the Synthesis of Form
- The Timeless Way of Building
- The Nature of Order
Ever since I first read his “The Timeless Way of Building”, I seek the beauty of what I do, namely, programming. Is there beauty in code, in programs, in algorithms? When they say a mathematical theorem is beautiful, what does it mean? If we don’t have beauty in programs we currently have, can we come up with programming languages that allow us to create beautiful programs?
Of course, first of all, we need to know what beauty is or can be in a program. What is the quality that will inform us of the beauty of a beautiful program? Is it also nameless?
In this series of articles, I will go back and re-read Christopher Alexander’s “The Timeless Way of Building”, through my eyes, after 25 years of knowing his ideas, to see whether it still has the same hold on me as the time I first read the book 25 years ago.
I guess this is part 0 of the series.
