Asghar Talaye Minai Book order

Minai develops the idea that an aesthetic value is not necessarily an objective value reasoned by rationality. Beauty is a matter of chance and necessity in the nature of things, a matter of the order of things and the circumstances of their interconnections, or predictable and unpredictable forces. To know such a complex system we need to establish a view of phenomenology and hermeneutics, a world view where bad and good and ugly and beautiful are part of a continuum of changes and differences. In that world view, it is essential to have an understanding of mind, nature, and the epistemology of knowing.

The book presents a theory of design as aesthetic communication which tends to bring design and specifically architecture in phase with contemporary views of the universe, society, and culture expressed by modern physics, biology, information theory, cybernetics, and current technology. It stresses the concept that within the seeming randomness of the twentieth century life there is an «order» that is more meaningful than the order imposed by formal rationality. It puts forward an alternative model for the traditional view which supposes that aesthetic judgement and design processes are linear progressions. Design is viewed here as the process resulting from attempts in communicating symbolic information.