The Architect’s Paradox
The Architect’s Paradox
Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Software Architecture
About the Book
How do we make decisions as software architects? How do we create the conceptual structures that drive our architectures? Most architects cannot even begin to answer this question. The Architect’s Paradox is an investigation of the underlying philosophical beliefs of software architects. The book compares the journey of ideas in software to the journey in Western philosophy and reveals the default philosophy that most architects aren’t even aware they carry with them. It then asks what we can do that’s different, that moves architect forward beyond traditional thinking.
This book provides many chances to think about your own architectural practice, how you think, how you relate your software to the real world. It also serves as an introduction to philosophy for software architects who want a relatable way to get started, with every thinker and idea linked to challenges of building software systems.
About the Author
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- How this book is structured
- SECTION I: Computing and the Philosophies of Stillness
- Walk 1: What is Architecture?
- Starting with Plato
- Architecture in Theory
- Verifying Conceptual Structures
- Walk 2: Certainty and Uncertainty.
- Reductionism
- Walk 3: Determinism, Reductionism, Logic and the Birth of Computing
- The Birth of Computing
- Requirements “engineering”
- Coping with change
- Walk 4: Chaos and the Philosophies of Stillness.
- Parmenides, Plato and our obsession with stillness
- The Accidental Philosophy of Software Architecture
- Walk 5: Essentialism.
- Platonic Forms and Abstraction
- How this turns up in software.
- Walk 6: Causality, Mechanism, and Determinism
- How does this apply to architecture?
- Essentialism, Determinism, and Causality
- What Does This Mean for Software Architecture?
- Determinism, Essentialism, and the Age of the Machine: Cybernetics
- Walk 7: Logical Structuralism
- What Does This Mean for Software Architecture?
- Economics, Trade-offs & Neoliberalism
- Modeling Logical Structuralism
- Baudrillard
- Summary: The Default Philosophy of Architecture
- Walk 8: Skepticism, Rationalism, and Empiricism
- Skepticism in Software
- SECTION II: The World That Refuses to Be Still
- Interlude
- Architecture & Metaphysics
- Walk 9: Being and Becoming.
- Walk 10: Kant, Hegel, and How We Think About Things
- Relative a priori
- Hegel brings back becoming
- Walk 11: Reversing Platonism and the Crisis of Meaning
- Analytic vs Continental Philosophy
- SECTION III: The Philosophies of Movement
- Walk 12: Philosophies of Movement
- Process Philosophy
- Post-structuralism
- Pragmatism
- Induction, Deduction, and Abduction.
- Summary
- Evolution
- Walk 13: Emergentism
- Emergentism
- Emergentism as Science
- Walk 14: Complexity Science
- Complexity and Model Drift
- A Better Approach to Complexity.
- The Deleuzian Walk
- Walk 15: Residuality Theory
- Architecture as Science
- What do we do with it?
- How should an architect think
- Walk 16: Conclusion.
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
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