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16 - Conclusion: International Institutions and the Problems of Adaptation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

By
Richard Gowan  and
Bruce D. Jones
Edited by
Bruce D. Jones ,
Shepard Forman  and
Richard Gowan
Bruce D. Jones
Affiliation:
New York University
Shepard Forman
Affiliation:
New York University
Richard Gowan
Affiliation:
New York University
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Summary

In 1979, the evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin gave a conference paper that was soon recognized as a classic in their field. At first, it seemed to have nothing to do with evolution at all. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme” opens by observing that “the great central dome of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice presents in its mosaic design a detailed iconography expressing the mainstays of the Christian faith.”

Three circles of figures radiate out from a central image of Christ: angels, disciples and virtues. Each circle is divided into quadrants, even though the dome itself is radially symmetrical in structure. Each quadrant meets one of the four spandrels in the arches below the dome. Spandrels – the tapering triangular spaces formed by the intersection of two rounded arches at right-angles – are necessary architectural by-products of mounting a dome on rounded arches. Each spandrel contains a design fitted into its tapering space. An evangelist sits in the upper part flanked by the heavenly cities. Below, a man representing one of the four Biblical rivers (Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Nile) pours water into the narrow space below his feet.

This is noteworthy not only because the artistry in the spandrels is beautiful but also because its beauty can fool a tourist or art historian “to view it as the starting point of any analysis, as the cause in some sense of the surrounding architecture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cooperating for Peace and Security
Evolving Institutions and Arrangements in a Context of Changing U.S. Security Policy
 , pp. 311 - 320
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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References

Gould, Stephen Jay and Lewontin, Richard C., “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 205, No. 1161 (1979), pp. 581–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flannery, Tim, “A New Darwinism?”, New York Review of Books 49, No. 9 (May 23, 2003)Google Scholar
Haftendorn, Helga, Keohane, Robert O., and Wallander, Celeste A., Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time and Space (Oxford, 1999), p. 12Google Scholar
Gowan, Richard and Brantner, Franziska, A Global Force for Human Rights? An Audit of European Power at the UN (European Council on Foreign Relations, 2008), pp. 37–46Google Scholar
Luck, Edward C., “How Not to Reform the United Nations,” Global Governance 11 (2005)Google Scholar
Berdal, Mats, “The UN's Unnecessary Crisis,” Survival 47, No. 3 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Bruce D., Pascual, Carlos, and Stedman, Stephen John, Power and Responsibility (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), p. 14Google Scholar

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