The existence of structure-destroying transformations as a social norm is linked to a breakdown in the perception of wholeness itself.

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• The problem of structure-destroying transformations applies both to a building's relation to its surroundings and to the interior structure of the building itself.claim0.837
  Scope of the problem.
• Human beings can violate the tendency to preserve wholeness either by acting disrespectfully toward it or by failing to perceive it accurately, which explains why modern buildings often lack living structure.claim0.831
  Alexander's explanation for the 'temperamental' nature of the principle: it can be overridden by human agency
• The unfolding of wholeness through structure-preserving transformations must inevitably create the fifteen properties.hypothesis0.829
• Every wholeness carries a latent structure that we must feel to perform structure-preserving transformations.claim0.829
• Sequence of all structure-preserving transformations almost always beautiful; a single bad transformation causes ugliness and is hard to recover fromfinding0.825
  In laboratory studies, repeated structure-preserving transformations led to beautiful results, while a single structure-destroying step disrupted the unfolding and proved very difficult to repair.
• In modern human society, building actions are not guaranteed to be wholeness preserving because they are governed by mental images and schemata.claim0.820
  Central premise of the chapter.
• The profound wholeness of living structure, almost every time it has been done most profoundly, has been done in a mystical‑religious context.claim0.819
  A sweeping historical observation that grounds the claim that mystical context is a near‑universal condition for the highest living structure.
• Even death and destruction in nature are structure-preserving because they preserve and extend the whole, unlike human image-driven processes.claim0.814
  Distinction between natural and human destruction.