I read this page about Christopher Alexander The Nature of Order. It’s maintained by Nikos Salingaros, a professor of mathematics and architectural theorist at University of Texas who have assisted Alexander in editing the book. He summarizes it:

Alexander develops a comprehensive theory of how matter comes together to form coherent structures. Paralleling, but not copying, recent results from complexity theory, he argues that the same laws apply to all structures in the universe; from atoms, to crystals, to living forms, to galaxies. Human beings apparently have a built-in (though subconscious) understanding of these laws. Man’s creations have the option of following the same laws, or violating them. [When did we begin violating them?] Those that follow them result in our greatest achievements, either as artifacts, as buildings, or as cities.

Salingaros continues to say that Alexander’s work is relevant to software developers, and that it “in the words of some enthusiasts, could define “a new paradigm for programming”” He points to something that judging by the URL could be a wiki, and which should be a “series of articles [by Jim Coplien] outlining the possible applications of the Nature of Order to software.” Unfortunately, I get a server error there.

There’s also an excerpt from volume four of the book, which Salingaros says “is a deeply spiritual work [which] transcends architecture, and plunges into what it is that connects us with our universe.”. Again, Tao:

What I call “the I” is that interior element in a work of art, which makes one feel related to it. It may occur in a leaf, or in a picture, in a house, in a wave, even in a grain of sand, or in an ornament. It is not ego. It is not me. It is not individual at all, having to do with me, or you. It is humble, and enormous: that thing in common which each one of us has in us. It is the spirit which animates each living center. [–––]

For I believe it is the nature of matter itself, which is soaked through with I. The essence of my argument in Book 4 is that the I, the thing I call the I, which lies at the core of our experience, is a real thing, existing in all matter, beyond ourselves, and that we must understand it this way in order to make sense of living structure, of buildings, of art, and of our place in the world.

I think I need all four of them.