Efecto de la tasa de vapor inyectado sobre la recuperación de crudo en

principle of culture as a whole. This principle is very close to what modern anthropology has described as a law of relief (Entlastung).28_{Relief is a deep-}

seated tendency in human life to move beyond the immediacy of the given situation, to concentrate on the typical and the essential. In everyday expe- rience we do not perceive things in their entirety; instead, in the course of our development the perceptual field becomes largely symbolic.29 _{In this}

shift, we concentrate increasingly on the more conscious, intellectual func- tions that represent the primary experience only suggestively. According to the philosopher and sociologist Arnold Gehlen,

In order for the lower functions to be directed and utilized, the higher ones must take over certain tasks which were previously the province of the lower ones. Above all these are the variations and combinations of movements. The higher functions however do this in a suggestive predominantly symbolic form. They are therefore conscious. This mechanism is in fact the basis for categorizing the functions as lower or higher.30

The relationship between the higher functions, which contribute fundamentally to the articulation of our world, and the lower ones, which contribute to its embodiment, is initially symbolic. Only in symbolic articu- lation are we informed about the richness of events that take place in the depths of our human situation and experience. As Gehlen points out, “We have no knowledge of the irresistible complexity and perfection of the veg- etative and motor processes; consciousness is apparently not able to inform us about these.”31_{A typical example of relief is our ability to draw a plan of}

a building that does not exist yet. This is quite clearly a symbolic operation in which every move is suggestive of a content that only a complex back- ground can provide. The availability of the content depends on the condi- tions of translation—in other words, on how far we succeed in seeing the diagrammatic drawing (a plan for instance) as the concrete building itself. However, it also depends on the cultivation of the background, which de- cides how rich and concrete the content is and how it is structured by its possible translation into more articulated levels of experience and meaning. Only under these conditions can the background serve as a basis for the free play of our imagination and thought, for experimentation, invention, and

creativity, as well as for evaluation and critical judgment. The higher levels of experience are more autonomous and free; they contain new structures that cannot be derived from the lower strata and in that sense they are richer. Yet the cost of that richness is weakness, a dependence on the exis- tence and structure of the lower strata of experiential reality. To better un- derstand how the relationship between articulation and embodiment is manifested in architecture, consider the following example.

The west facade of Chartres cathedral is dominated by the rose win- dow summarizing the iconographic program and the overall meaning of the facade (figure 2.7). Its primary theme is the Last Judgment, centered on the figure of Christ in his second coming (Parousia).32_{The Parousia of Christ is}

the final stage of his coming, which began with the incarnation of the word, continued with his descent into death, and will end in the resurrection and the outpouring of the light that completes the transformation of the world. The return of Christ marks the arrival of all things at their final destination. It is interesting to note that at Chartres the Last Judgment was elevated to the upper part of the facade and thereby incorporated into the solar sym- bolism of the cathedral.33_{This was an innovation that reflected the newly}

emerging tendency in scholasticism to make visible the mystery of light and treat it as a mediating corporeal form. In the Chartres rose window, the story of the gospel is interpreted as an image embodied in the colored glass, which is in turn embodied in the shape of the window, in the composition of the wall, and finally in the structure of the church as a whole. These em- bodiments also represent a corresponding sequence of articulations.

The body of the church articulates the global meaning of the facade through its topographical arrangement and the character of its space. The facade itself is defined only in general terms, referring in one sense to the domain of sunset and death, to an entry into the celestial city in another. The topography and orientation of the cathedral represent only the prelim- inary meaning of the whole. What is more important is that the body of the cathedral provides a background for the articulation of the more explicit meanings visible in the physiognomy and iconography of the sculpture and colored windows.

The light that penetrates the colored glass reveals the different lev- els of the articulation most clearly (figure 2.8). On the highest level, light is the visible manifestation of its invisible source (lux), which is closely linked

65 CHAPTER 2 THE NA TURE OF C OMMUNICA TIVE SP A CE 64