where did the patterns come from?

The great difficulty hanging over the theory — the question of the legitimate origin of patterns that Alexander identifies as unresolved at the time of A Pattern Language

Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count

Hypotheses (1)

hypothesis

If a structure-preserving unfolding process is applied to existing cultural wholeness, it can non-arbitrarily derive the patterns that should generate present and future environments
answered_by
Alexander's retrospective hypothesis about how the pattern origin problem could have been solved twenty years earlier

Related by similarity (8)

cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edge

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

if our world is impacted by these patterns, where do they themselves come from? What is the origin of the Platonic space of patterns?question0.813
Final open question of the paper, left deliberately unresolved.
what is the origin of different kinds of patterns, whether they be patterns of anatomy, physiology, or behavior?question0.792
Central unifying question motivating the whole research program.
patternsconcept0.760
Designs containing a repeating motif
Though the pattern language was created by the architect from people's words, it is theirs — they recognize it as their own collective visionclaim0.736
Describes the appropriate role of the architect as scribe, not author of the collective vision
Patterns capture knowledge beyond the individual.claim0.725
Why technologists love Alexander; patterns as mechanism for sharing and reusing design knowledge.
real patternsconcept0.718
Dennett's concept: patterns that are ontologically real because they are useful for prediction.
The Pattern Origin Problem (Sword of Damocles)concept0.715
The deep methodological problem in pattern language theory: if patterns are derived from existing culture, they merely reiterate the status quo; if invented, they lack grounding
Pattern as Rule for Making Centersconcept0.710
The precise reformulation: each pattern is a rule describing a type of strong center needed on a recurring basis and the relations among neighboring centers