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

a problem arising from the Armenian refugees who had escaped persecutions in the Turkish Empire. When we look at Cyprus, what are the facts resulting from the simplest survey (and remember that a key to Geddes’ method is to start always with the survey—‘diagnosis before treatment’)? As a background to the troubles of our own day we see, even without going there, that we have the case ofa fairly large and well populated Mediterranean island, with a majority speaking Greek a very long way from Greece, and a minority speaking Turkish within sight of the Turkish mainland. That is enough for a start to warn one of the kind of trouble to be expected. But look into the geographical setting more closely, as Geddes did, and what do we find? An island situated near the centre of a standing geo-economic problem affecting a considerable population in all the Eastern Mediterranean lands—the problem of irrigation. What Geddes said was the need of Cyprus ‘is not for British civil servants but for the geologists, water engineers and agricultural scientists of all interested countries, with powerful international backing, to move in on this problem and tackle it using Cyprus as a base. If Britain wants to-be specially involved let her set up the Institute and send some good scientists’. This could become not only a prototype and pilot scheme, but a working base for the solution of irrigation problems in the whole Eastern Mediterranean area; thus, also the island would be revivified and dynamised into a new collective purpose, in which the claims of rival nationalists would have to sink down. Many British as well as Cypriot and other lives might have been saved by this, and the whole economic and social development of the Eastern Mediterranean speeded up.

By his actions in Cyprus Geddes did in a very short time solve many of the problems of the 600 Armenian refugees who were his reason for going there. But note that his actions included buying a farm there so as to work out a solution to some of the environmental problems, and also re-enacting the miraculous performance of Moses’ rod by striking the rock so that the water (which was trapped within it) gushed forth.

May Inow try to put simply and clearly what are the underlying concepts of Geddes’ approach to the problems of man in his environment — admitting all the risks attendant upon simplification.