excerpts from The Postmodern Turn Steven Best and Douglas Kellner 
I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure," compromising rather than "clean." I prefer
"both-and" to "either-or."
 -Robert Venturi
...  It  is, however, Robert Venturi who  is most centrally associated with  the postmodern  turn  in
architecture. Venturi (1966) established a series of principles in opposition to modernism, such
as  complexity  and  hybridity  versus  modernism's  simplicity  and  purity.  The  very  title  of
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, signifies opposition to Bauhaus minimalism, but
the book was particularly influential because he coded his heterodox departures in language that
paid homage to the masters, in the form of a "gentle" manifesto. Venturi also championed "the
difficult  unity  of  inclusion"  over modernism's  "easy  unity  of  exclusion"  (1966:  16).  Thus,
whereas  high modernism  systematically  excluded  ornamentation,  decoration,  and  historical
allusion, Venturi called  for  the  inclusion of  these elements, promoting a pluralist and eclectic
aesthetic  of  inclusion  that would  embrace  different  styles,  codings,  and  decorative  elements
banished by high modernism.
...Le Corbusier was very concerned with both the texture of his materials and, in the
case  of  Ronchamp  and  the  Phillips  Pavilion, with  the  acoustics  of  his  rooms, whereby  he
attempted  to devise a  total audiovisual experience, or a  "landscape acoustics."
...Reconstructing social space  requires  insight  into  the social  interests  that control architecture,
design, and urban planning. A more democratic politics of space would allow citizen input into
the  design  of  their  communities  and  an  appreciation  for  the  specific  contributions  to  the
construction of space by women, youth, and people of different ethnic and subcultural groups.
As  Jane  Jacobs  pointed  out, women  have  traditionally made  important  contributions  to  the
construction of domestic space, community, and neighborliness, but their creativity has not been
fully esteemed. The same could be said of youth subcultural groups, ethnic subcultures, and gay
and  lesbian  cultures,  which  have  often  constructed  imaginative  and  aesthetically  pleasing
habitats for members of their group, which provide a sense of comfort and belonging not found
in the impersonal or oppressive public spaces of the contemporary city.
 Dolores Hayden  (1984),  for  instance,  criticizes  the ways  that male  and  commercial  culture
deface the city (quasi-pornographic billboards, advertising, displays of macho violence, etc.) and
discusses how  the Los Angeles Woman's Building, an arts workshop, gets women  involved  in
the construction of public spaces and public art. Jane Jacobs, Hayden, and others also endeavor
to promote the appreciation of women's contributions to constructing community and to produce
spaces and institutions, like daycare centers, rape crisis shelters, and community health centers,
that meet women's needs. In King's view, a feminine spatial design will be very different from
the male: "It will break  things down, make  them accessible;  remove  the  steps and  the podia;
break  the  facades with  flowers  and  scented  fruits;  reduce  the  scale;  reinstate  the  tactile,  the
sounds of water and birds, the places of children's play (Nietzsche's 'play that calls new worlds to
life'),  the  impermanent  and  the  appropriable"  (1996:  236-237)
  A postmodern philosophy of  space would  accordingly valorize  the  construction of domestic
space  and  public  space  that would  include  not  only  new  buildings  and  structures  but  new
extures, sights, sounds, smells, and aesthetics, reinstating the tactile, the aural, the olfactory, and
he auditory, thus affirming all of the senses as key constituents of the environment. This would
nvolve an aestheticizing of everyday life and a reconstruction of the look, feel, and experience
of social space with new buildings, public spaces, nature, and forms of art appropriate to specific
local  regions and  sites. The  reconstruction of  social  space would  involve  the  reintegration of
nature and the social, the resurrection of the senses, and new spaces to fulfill and cultivate the
many-sided  needs  and  potentials  of  the  human  being. The  postmodern  aestheticizing  of  the
environment would thus realize the earlier avant-garde aspirations for the merger of art and life
and would bring architecture, sculpture, paintings, and  the other forms of visual culture  into a
closer relationship in a reconstruction of culture and society.
...But a postmodern culture involves sound as well as sight, discourse as well as images, music as
well  as  visual  art.  Indeed,  juxtapositions  between  word  and  image,  sight  and  sound,  are
characteristic  of  postmodern  culture, which  brings  spectacle  into musical  performance  and
sounds into many visual art installations, as well as making use of video and computer art. The
spoken word-as well as graphics presenting concepts and texts-is very important in the works of
Martha Rosler and Joan Braderman, who use the power of the word to demystify and deconstruct
dominant  images and  to encourage  thought and  reflection. Music  is central  to many  forms of
postmodern avant-garde art ranging from the works of John Cage to Laurie Anderson. In Home
of  the  Brave  (1986)  and  succeeding  performance  art,  Anderson mixes media,  genres,  and
aesthetic forms to provide critical commentary on the media and consumer society. Reviving the
art  of  storytelling,  dormant  in  a media  culture, Anderson  tells  stories  about  the  postmodern
technoculture, punctuated and illustrated by a cornucopia of sights, sounds, and spectacle.
 With the postmodern turn in art, critics are now more inclined to look toward women's art, the
art  of  people  of  color,  non-Western  art,  and  art  from  sources  previously  excluded  from  the
established pantheons for new and exciting developments than they were during the first decades
of  the  postwar  period  when  there  was  still  something  of  an  aesthetic  consensus  and
establishment, with  its pantheon of  largely white male artists. Now aesthetic values are up for
grabs,  and  there  are  continual  redefinitions  of  art  and  controversies  concerning  the  most
appropriate and advanced art of our time. There is, as of yet, no established history, genealogy,
tradition, or canon of postmodern art. Rather, there continue to be intense controversies between
defenders  of  the  modern  and  the  postmodern  and  an  overwhelmingly  diversity  of  new
postmodern artifacts, with heated controversy over their significance and value.
________________________________________________________________________________Conceptual metaphors are seen in language in our everyday lives. Conceptual metaphors shape not just our communication, but also shape the way we think and act. In George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, Metaphors We Live By (1980) <sample> <a few chapters>, we see how everyday language is filled with metaphors we may not always notice. An example of one of the commonly used conceptual metaphors is argument as war.^[2] This metaphor shapes our language in the way we view argument as war or as a battle to be won. It is not uncommon to hear someone say "He won that argument" or "I attacked every weak point in his argument". The very way argument is thought of is shaped by this metaphor of arguments being war and battles that must be won. Argument can be seen in many other ways other than a battle, but we use this concept to shape the way we think of argument and the way we go about arguing.
...   ...   ...   Lakoff has also claimed that we should remain agnostic about whether math is somehow wrapped up with the very nature of the universe. Early in 2001 Lakoff told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): "Mathematics may or may not be out there in the world, but there's no way that we scientifically could possibly tell." This is because the structures of scientific knowledge are not "out there" but rather in our brains, based on the details of our anatomy. Therefore, we cannot "tell" that mathematics is "out there" without relying on conceptual metaphors rooted in our biology. This claim bothers those who believe that there really is a way we could "tell". The falsifiability of this claim is perhaps the central problem in the cognitive science of mathematics, a field that attempts to establish a foundation ontology based on the human cognitive and scientific process.
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PDF random research random site
                        and (useful) links 1, 2, 3
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