384
with the forces of human history, emboldened toward a very construct of infinity
that has borrowed from every nuance of Utopia. This is the Erlach so at home in the
unbounded coordinates of a Schönbrunn. He was to palatial mortar what a Frederic
Edwin Church was to the tropical Andes.
16
In such imaginary unions and schisms is natural selection in humans modified by
the inconvenient realities of physical constraint, and the invention of depth, altitude,
and multitudinous perspective to advance the cause with which Dante concluded his
own epic (the Divine Comedy, 1320) by formulating his nine spheres of heaven.
That Empyrean cosmology both taunts and contradicts human imperial reasoning,
torturing demons with angels, people with higher causes than themselves. The
human scale with otherworldly comforts of the illimitable. All of these divides are
at the heart of an ecological dementia, when augmented to the level of a large vertebrate numbering nearly eight billion who is paradoxically hell-bent on fouling
every nest.
42.4 Natural and Unnatural Occupancies
Schönbrunn—its grand airs nothing compared with the 9999 rooms of the Forbidden
City—sits there, open to day-long tours, after which most people return to their own
petit dominions. Such personal spaces, our studio apartments and farmhouses still
measured by feet, hands, eyes, odors, and a modicum of comfort for our particular
hominid anatomies, are ultimately very little changed from the earliest cave dwellings, whether at the Chinese Guyaju, the Sassi di Matera in Italy, the Bandiagara
Escarpment in Mali, Ancestral Puebloans throughout the North American Southwest,
or Kandovan in East Azerbaijan Province. People were still living in the Cappadocian
caves of Uçhisar until the 1950s. The Shanidar Caves in Iraq were home to at least
two different hominid species of different communities for over 55,000 years.
According to the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements (UNCHS)
deteriorating living conditions for much of humanity in at least 37 nations studied
have resulted in an average floor space per person of approximately 20 m
2
, or just
over 215 square feet.
17
In the United States, square footage for apartments varies
from 711 sq. feet in Seattle (the smallest) to 1038 sq. feet in Tallahassee.
18
From
India to Germany, apartment sizes—which house the overwhelming bulk of the
more than 50% of the human population which is now urban—comport with the US
figures. “Just under 1-in-3 people in urban areas globally live in slum households,”
16 For a British equivalent to an architect grappling with the natural/unnatural bifurcations, see the
work of Thomas Robins the Elder (1715–1770), as exemplified in the book, Gardens Of Delight –
The Rococo English Landscape Of Thomas Robins The Elder, by John Harris, With Natural
History Notes by Dr. Martyn Rix, The Basilisk Press, London, 1978.
17 See “Charting the Progress of Populations,” United Nations Population Division, https://www.
un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/trends/ProgressOfPopulations/14.pdf.
18 “The Average Apartment Size of the Largest US Cities, Charted,” by Digg, November 27, 2018,
https://digg.com/2018/average-apartment-size-data-viz, Accessed April 18, 2020.
42 Does Natural Selection Select for Natural Selection?
with the forces of human history, emboldened toward a very construct of infinity
that has borrowed from every nuance of Utopia. This is the Erlach so at home in the
unbounded coordinates of a Schönbrunn. He was to palatial mortar what a Frederic
Edwin Church was to the tropical Andes.
16
In such imaginary unions and schisms is natural selection in humans modified by
the inconvenient realities of physical constraint, and the invention of depth, altitude,
and multitudinous perspective to advance the cause with which Dante concluded his
own epic (the Divine Comedy, 1320) by formulating his nine spheres of heaven.
That Empyrean cosmology both taunts and contradicts human imperial reasoning,
torturing demons with angels, people with higher causes than themselves. The
human scale with otherworldly comforts of the illimitable. All of these divides are
at the heart of an ecological dementia, when augmented to the level of a large vertebrate numbering nearly eight billion who is paradoxically hell-bent on fouling
every nest.
42.4 Natural and Unnatural Occupancies
Schönbrunn—its grand airs nothing compared with the 9999 rooms of the Forbidden
City—sits there, open to day-long tours, after which most people return to their own
petit dominions. Such personal spaces, our studio apartments and farmhouses still
measured by feet, hands, eyes, odors, and a modicum of comfort for our particular
hominid anatomies, are ultimately very little changed from the earliest cave dwellings, whether at the Chinese Guyaju, the Sassi di Matera in Italy, the Bandiagara
Escarpment in Mali, Ancestral Puebloans throughout the North American Southwest,
or Kandovan in East Azerbaijan Province. People were still living in the Cappadocian
caves of Uçhisar until the 1950s. The Shanidar Caves in Iraq were home to at least
two different hominid species of different communities for over 55,000 years.
According to the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements (UNCHS)
deteriorating living conditions for much of humanity in at least 37 nations studied
have resulted in an average floor space per person of approximately 20 m
2
, or just
over 215 square feet.
17
In the United States, square footage for apartments varies
from 711 sq. feet in Seattle (the smallest) to 1038 sq. feet in Tallahassee.
18
From
India to Germany, apartment sizes—which house the overwhelming bulk of the
more than 50% of the human population which is now urban—comport with the US
figures. “Just under 1-in-3 people in urban areas globally live in slum households,”
16 For a British equivalent to an architect grappling with the natural/unnatural bifurcations, see the
work of Thomas Robins the Elder (1715–1770), as exemplified in the book, Gardens Of Delight –
The Rococo English Landscape Of Thomas Robins The Elder, by John Harris, With Natural
History Notes by Dr. Martyn Rix, The Basilisk Press, London, 1978.
17 See “Charting the Progress of Populations,” United Nations Population Division, https://www.
un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/trends/ProgressOfPopulations/14.pdf.
18 “The Average Apartment Size of the Largest US Cities, Charted,” by Digg, November 27, 2018,
https://digg.com/2018/average-apartment-size-data-viz, Accessed April 18, 2020.
42 Does Natural Selection Select for Natural Selection?