In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content.
The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others.
Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work.
Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.
Finally, strategy must have continuity. It can't be constantly reinvented.
Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
Courses on historical methodology are not worth the time that they take up. I shall never give one myself, and I have observed that many of my colleagues who do give such courses refrain from exemplifying their methods by writing anything.
No one ever taught me, and I never had formal classes in pattern making, so I was like, Okay, I'll just drape, and I'll sew as I pin it.
No opposing quotes found.