". . . I believe Alexander is likely to be remembered most of all, in the end, for having produced the first credible proof of the existence of God . . ."
     -Eric Buck, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky

The foundations of modern scientific thought, four centuries old, are firmly rooted in a conception that the universe is a machinelike entity, a play of baubles, machines, trinkets. To this day, our real daily experience of ourselves has no clear place in science. It is little wonder that such a world-view has supported the deadly architecture of the last century.

This mechanistic thinking and the consequent investment-oriented tracts of houses, condominiums and offices have dehumanized our cities and our lives. How are spirit, soul, emotion, feeling to be introduced into a building, or a street, or a development project, in modern times?

The Luminous Ground, the fourth book of The Nature of Order, contains what is, perhaps, the deepest revelation in the four-volume work. Here is a geometrical view of space and matter seamlessly connected to our own private, personal, experience as sentient and knowing creatures. This is not merely an emotional appendix to the scientific theory of the other books. It is at the core of the entire work, and is rooted in the fact that our two sides - our analytical thinking selves, and our vulnerable-emotional personalities as human beings - are coterminous, and must be harnessed at one and the same time, if we are ever to really make sense of what is around us, and be able to create a living world.

Alexander breaks away completely from the one-sided mechanical model of buildings or neighborhoods as mere assemblages of technically generated interchangeable parts. He shows us conclusively that a spiritual, emotional, and personal basis must underlie every act of building. His stunning buildings and works of art demonstrate in detail what he means. And then, in the middle of the book, comes the linchpin of the work; a one-hundred page chapter on color, which lavishly illustrates and dramatically conveys the way that consciousness and spirit can make their appearance in the world.

Altogether, present throughout this fourth and final book, is a new cosmology uniting matter and consciousness: consciousness inextricably joined to the substrate of matter, present in all matter, and providing all wholeness with its material, cognitive, and spiritual underpinnings This view, though radical, conforms to our most ordinary, daily intuitions. It may provide a path for those contemporary physicists who are beginning to see consciousness as the underpinning of all matter, and thus as a proper object of scientific study.