2022-01-26 ![[moses_a_fire_in_the_fireplace_someone_who_really_understands_a__09ffc910-abcd-4672-840b-4038ad92e5f6.png]] > The word which we most often use to talk about the quality without a name is the word “alive.” > ... > A well-made fire is alive. There is a world of difference between a fire which is a pile of burning logs, and a fire which is made by someone who really understands a fire. He places each log exactly to make the air between the logs just right. He doesn’t stir the logs with a poker, but while they are burning, grasps each one, and places it again, perhaps only an inch from where it was before. The logs are so exactly placed that they form channels for the draft. Waves of liquid yellow flame run up the Logs when the draft blows. Each log glows with full intensity. The fire, watched, burns so intensely and so steadily, that when it dies, finally, it burns to nothing; when the last glow dies, there is nothing but a little dust left in the fireplace. > —[[Ref. Christopher Alexander 1979 - The timeless way of building]] > Another word we often use to talk about the quality without a name is “whole." > A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes. > -[[Ref. Christopher Alexander 1979 - The timeless way of building]] cf. [[Integration]]