Biotechnics : the practice of synthesis in the work of Patrick Geddes

multiple federation of regions, and of guilds both industrial and cultural—a grand enlargement of that Central European country, Switzerland, which happens to have evolved what is perhaps the best political constitution, but incorporating also the healthy rural-urban, agricultural-industrial balance and the cultural creativity of the ancient Greek ‘city State’.

The city for Geddes was the essence—the place not merely of the market and the parliament or palace but also the cathedral and the university. In this sense he envisaged a radiant and healthy equality between the regions of our own country, none dominating, none unhealthily over-specialized (as our own industrial areas unfortunately became during the first Industrial Revolution).

The detailed application of this vision was carefully worked out by an admirable geographer who was one of our own Patrons, the late Professor C. B. Fawcett, in his book ‘Provinces of England’, published in 1919 and re-issued in 1960.

Problems of Welsh Nationalism and Scottish Nationalism would fall into place if Fawcett’s twelve Provinces of England, or something very like them, were fully realised—as would problems of nationalism everywhere if Geddes’ “Devolution in Federation’ and ‘Federation in Devolution’ were carried out on every plane—political, economic and cultural.

He had of course, particular reason for his awareness of these issues and their underlying realities. His wise father, Captain Geddes, was bilingual in English and Gaelic, and when the family moved from Ballater to Perth young Patrick had the stimulus and educational advantages of a fine small city at the very hub of Scotland, a rich and varied natural environment, and a father who knew perhaps instinctively that the most lasting educative experiences might be those of activity in making things grow in the garden. His walks and rambles showed young Geddes the determining nature of the lie of the land and its resources, and he saw the skills of the different craftsmen and artisans arising from the nature of their work but then reflecting back on it to change even the environment. ‘Holland made the Dutch. Yes, but the Dutch made Holland’ was one of his later observations about this.

To take a telling example in which Geddes showed the way but failed to win the support that might have avoided years of bloodshed and suffering—the case of Cyprus—where he tackled

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