the core of aristotle’s metaphysics

“Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error-opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true:  further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premises are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive. From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises-a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific  knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premise, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact.”

—Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II:19, G. R. G. Mure (MITweb)

para_si(gh)t_e

para_site – beside, near, past, beyond or contrary locus
para_sight – beside, near, past, beyond or contrary notion
parasite – symbiotic relationship between organisms (architectures) of different orientations

Parasitology – as Kostas Terzidis put it in a recent chat in the desert of Taliesin West – is a dialog initiated in a strong and urgent observation that architectural theory has reached an unexpected expiry of dogmatic structure and has entered a reality of disparate and often mutually exclusive notional rants. Out of this dialog, I expect a sort of manifesto that calls for the preservation of this void in theory that energizes a forum for experimentation, and resists forces that create platforms for dogmatic or ulterior-motive theory.

The interconnected, dysfunctioning, and volatile systemic collapses that we are witnessing ever so frequently, prompts ridding the term parasite of its negative connotation and exploring it as Eris’ apple in an emerging tendency to a unified theory. Old patterns decay. Parasitic theory preserves this emerging void for the purpose of relentless experimentation.