I was walking along the canal this evening, enjoying its basic beauty, and thinking how easily my perspective view of it can be reduced to a simple and elegant diagram. It then occurred to me that I find the diagram more beautiful than the canal itself. I extrapolated that I often find diagrams (as well as models, frameworks, schemata, and other abstractions) more appealing than the realities they represent. I believe I am not the only abstraction fetishist. Why else would illustrations from Edward R. Tufte’s seminal books on information design be sold as “fine art prints?”

This illustrates a trend towards increasing reliance on abstract thinking in the professional world. The reason for this reliance, of course, is that if you can abstract a real-life phenomenon you can harness the abundant computing power that is available today for prediction. However, I am also interested in the way abstractions facilitate comprehension, and thus bring clarity. Notice how, for example, the Athens College Theatre, which can be architecturally described as a diagrammatic building (inasmuch as it consists of a half-sunken cube containing a cylindrical auditorium, with the interstitial space forming the foyers), is a comfortable space for its visitors because of its obvious geometry. In architectural design much praise is reserved for buildings that can be reduced to elegant diagrams, because those diagrams reinstate clarity in what are incredibly complex systems of materials and intensive flows.

For some of us it is important to understand things in their basic principles in order to feel comfortable. A penchant for sexy little diagrams is a side effect of this.