The Tectonics of the Soul: Animist Survivals in Nineteenth-Century Architecture and Ornamentation

Following the emergence of theories of tectonics and the novel theorization of ornament based on principles of the natural sciences, mid-nineteenth-century architectural discourses were informed by a resurgence of interest in animism. These animist descriptions were a veritable amalgam of earlier philosophical theories of the soul from Aristotle to the early modern medical philosopher Georg-Ernest Stahl and ethnographic accounts of the religious beliefs of non-Western cultures granting agency in natural or manmade objects, including trees, buildings, implements, and bodily ornaments. The epistemological impact of animism was implicitly catholic, expanding from imaginative theories of tectonics, such as the study of ancient Greek “tree worship” by the preeminent theorist of tectonics Karl Boetticher to the emerging discipline of architectural history, including the first monographic descriptions of non-Western monuments, such as the study of “tree and serpent worship” retraced on the heavily ornamented façades of two Indian monuments by “world” architectural historian James Fergusson.