Logic & Knowledge in Design

This is a response to a comment I received about one sentence in an essay I posted last year entitled, “Design with Intensity”. It has been revised and re-posted under the title, "Design with Intensity for Economic Stability" on my new site www.thebuiltdomain.net.

Sentence 

"If the challenge is accepted, architecture will enter a new period of city design. The effort will force it to enter the public arena, and this is where imagination is greeted with skepticism until logic is defended with knowledge."  ---Hosack 

Comment  

“I would have thought that knowledge should be defended with logic. Logic is a defense, in and of itself?” ---R. Ferris, AIA 

Response 

Logic without proof is opinion. It depends on persuasion. Inspiration, imagination and logic stimulate the search for knowledge. As knowledge increases it threatens opinion with the risk of change. Change is called adaptation when successful, and we must now adapt to land that is a gift we do not own.  

Instinct, intuition, inspiration, imagination and talent are priceless, but they remain isolated until success can be duplicated by others with knowledge.  

The logic of opinion is too easily challenged to be a defense for knowledge. Knowledge needs no defense because it rests on a foundation of proof -- until the proof itself is challenged.  

Knowledge of prior opinion is still opinion called precedent. The opinion of fine art is a focused beacon of talent in a black night. If public benefit is the objective, instinct, intuition, inspiration, imagination and logic must be defended with a foundation of knowledge to spread the light of design.