¶ Noun
RBF Definitions
"In architecture ‘form’ is a noun; in industry, ‘form’ is a verb. Industry is concerned with doing, whereas architecture has been engrossed with making replicas of end results of what people have industrially demonstrated in the past. Noun, in our phonetic etymology, means ‘now-one,’ i.e., the most recent chaos of thought reduced to an answer. The ‘now-one’ or noun must, in due course through selection by the intellect, become two or more observed characteristics of the one, there being no absolute identity. Nouns, from a language viewpoint, are tenable only as ‘names’ for facts recently determined. The noun is, therefore, more subject to constant revision than is any other part of speech. No longer is it ‘stone.’ No longer is it ‘steel.’ Industry is dealing in hundreds of different steels, physically more dissimilar than the Chinese and the Swiss.
¶ Citations
- NINE CHAINS TO THE MOON, p.41, 1938
