Rudy,

I caught wind of this from Bill Holes' comments in the PTN NNN.

I have been thinking about the situation re: technical 'scientific' 
approach to materials vs. human subjectivity as it pertains to what 
actually happens when someone touches the historic fabric. My 
incliniation is that folks, such as the person from Malta, go for a 
central controlled experience because what they can count they can 
understand... the problem is that what one can count makes for a rather 
simplistic model of reality. If you cannot understand much then you need 
numbers... similar to the mathematical reductions of philosophy into 
complex logic formulations -- the world is not a convenient algorythm 
and we as individuals are not simple interchangeable commodities -- 
despite all attempts to make us so. It is complex to count what people, 
such as traditional trades practitioners, or drunken astronauts, or 
almost anyone, will do. I cannot, of late, seem to have a single 
conversation with anyone attuned to historic conservation without them 
saying something mildly negative about the practice and other 
practitioners either on the trade, the academic or the design side  -- 
usually due it seems to me for thinking the other person somehow wrong 
in their technical approach. For me the signal is that the focus is 
skewed for a whole lot of reasons that tend to separate us from each 
other, and to frame our world view in a vicarious fashion of 
disengagement. For me it is becomming more and more aparent that an 
encompassing perspective of the social aspects of the preservation 
oriented community is possibly of a greater aggregate benefit to 
conserving heritage than a narrow focus on the specific technique and 
technology in the manipulation of materials.

Beyond knowledge of materials the Bohunk has a primacy in the knowledge 
of process. The Bohunk knows through the intelligence of using 
tools-in-hand to effect their environment. The intelligence of the 
Bohunk is in the process. It is this tendency to engage, to do 
something, to take action and to change the environment, to use tools 
that is causing me to have more and more interest in the sacred aspect 
of traditional trades. To me it is an incredibly wonderful and amazing 
action when a brick actually goes where I intend it to go. it makes me 
wonder, and it makes me want to set another brick to see if it will 
happen again. For that I don't think the academics have a clue as the 
mathematical models won't of their own accord lay the first brick.

][<en

> This goes directly to the fracas that erupted at the recent ITES in 
> Sweden when the well papered speaker from Malta explained that the 
> program they were developing would require someone with a college 
> degree in preservation be who decides how masonry restoration was to 
> be done to the point of stating that the very selection of materials 
> and methodology of installation would be specified by the 
> academics and then "carried out" by the masonry crew "under 
> supervision". The reaction from the trades people present was 
> wonderful to participate in.
>  
> Knowledge of materials is indeed something that is part of the 
> responsibilty of the bohunk.

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