Frances to Chris... The science and theory of review, on the empirical research and inquiry into architecture, would be the main start for me in sifting through the agreed opinions of learned experts in their respective groups. For any individual expert to personally select a good sample of architecture as an exemplar to stand for all of architecture is to use a token with a tone as a type. The individual solely alone in judging a work is however unreliable, because they could be deluded and not even realize it. The institutional and industrial and international standards for conferring the status of architectural accreditation and certification and authorization are not merely arbitrary social inventions without any basis in natural causes or laws. Any sound theory of architecture that may emerge from experts is a cultural law that must be derived from natural facts, such as a selected sampling of works that are admired on site by sight, and made prone to examination or investigation. Such a law is derived from a factual habit of conduct, and its truth will exist regardless of whether it is merely agreed to by a sheer convention. The conventional ground can be as good and true a fact as the causal ground or the formal ground, because they are all culled from dispositional tendencies. In concrete fact and in actual deed, the formal is preparatory to the causal, and the causal is contributory to the conventional, and the conventional is consummatory of them both, so that there is necessarily a combinatory progression at work here. The pragmatist principles at work here that impact on truth and law are fallibility and probability.
Chris wrote... Frances, why would it be better to sift through thousands of "somewhat professionally expert" writers (which would include every architect who had a license) instead of selecting those few whose work you most admire? Wouldn't an examination of all those thousands only reveal that which is conventional? If you really cared about how buildings look, such an approach would seem so un-pragmatic. But then, maybe you don't. Do you have any favorite buildings? Are there some that offend you? Can you share some examples of either kind?
