Foundations of a modern discipline 31behind that of knowledge per se. These questions were largely
implicit in the work of the fi rst generations of modern archi-
tectural historians, who sought to connect architectural arte-
facts to aesthetics and thereby undermine empiricism for its
own sake. Measurement survived the contingencies of this
institutional context to remain a fundamental tool for later
historical research in architecture.
Architecture and culture
High culture versus low culture
An a-priori defi nition of architecture shaped the positions of
Palladio and Piranesi on architecture’s basic artistic and tech-
nical principles, and helped them to navigate the historical
authorities on which rested their respective defi nitions of
architecture. The classical tradition made specifi c reference
to the buildings and monuments of Helleno-Roman anti-
quity. It offered room for invention, though, even if both
Palladio and Piranesi actively tested the boundaries of that
tradition. Under these terms architectural invention was his-
torically circumscribed. The systematization of knowledge
and the fl attening out of distinctions between high and low
classes of artefacts were together one set of legacies passed
in the mid nineteenth century from the empirical sciences to
the new Kulturwissenschaft, cultural science – or cultural
history, as English more commonly has it. This intellectual
and institutional development posed a problem for the oth-
erwise elevated art of architecture. The questions and tools
of cultural history could now be used to study anything con-
nected to human society: a building as readily as a pair of
shoes.^33 The philosophical question concerning architecture’s
differentiation from other types of building was neutralized
by the conceptual position that different kinds of building,
or minor architectural details, or stylistic or geographical
groupings not traditionally given much weight in the canon,
could all nonetheless inform the study of culture and cultural
change.