16 - Conclusion: International Institutions and the Problems of Adaptation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2010
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.
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- Cooperating for Peace and SecurityEvolving Institutions and Arrangements in a Context of Changing U.S. Security Policy, pp. 311 - 320Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009