Plato and the idea of TYPE -early notes

In his publication Design Thinking,  Peter G. Rowe discusses the conceptual tradition in Western Thinking of the idea of the "type". Formulated by Plato, it is a concept of there being 'one' and then 'the many' that are conceptually always related back to the 'one' that exists as a shared mental idea between human minds.

"The 'type idea' has exercised the minds of many in the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's "ideas" to modern linguistic conceptions of a type as a shared mental object, the relationship of the "one and many" inherent in the type idea has been a subject for profound contemplation and impassioned dispute for centuries. A central issue concerns the ability of a type, which is one thing, to stand for or represent more than one thing. Our trees and their trees are all "tree".

In architecture today, type often stands at the centre of debate. It is widely recognised as fundamental to the formulation of significant and legible work, both for its "one and the many" properties and, by extension, for the sense of continuity of tradition that is offered.   According to the definition promulgated by the eighteenth century theorist Quatremere de Quincy, "the art of regular building is both of a pre-existing source,' and that pre-existing source is the idea of type."