From Absolute to Abstract to Differential Space

The one idea I did have reading Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space was that it might be a basis for a critique of the discipline of Systems Engineering itself.

I have long had the idea that really it is Engineering which is the resevoir of the unconscious in our society.

It is so strange that there is a critique directed at Science from the social sciences called STS but that critique is hardly ever directed at Engineering and its texts.

Even Lefebvre directs most of this attention to architects.

But it seems to me, off the top of my head, that the place to look for the various conceptions of space and their sedimentation would be Engineering.

After all it is the productions of Engineers that are actually destroying the earth. Scientists take all the blame because they came up with the knowledge in the first place, but actually if it were not for engineers none of that knowledge would have been used on a wide scale for actually destructive "production" on a mass market scale.

If there is any one group who actively forge spaces it is in the unconscious of engineers, because they forge the products, that together define the spaces within which we live.

It might be interesting to look at engineering methods, especially systems engineering methods from the point of view of the stratification of different types of space that Lefebvre defines. It seems to me that Engineering is fully invested in embodying Abstract Space as he defines it. But there are probably traces of absolute space and hints of differential space.

I suppose my own work might be seen as the introduction of the ideas of differential space into Systems Engineering foundations.

Production of Space?

Henri Lefebvre wrote Production of Space in the Seventies.

I am reading it thirty or more years later.

I was reading it because I noticed it mentioned the idea of a science of space which goes along with my research topic of General Schemas Theory, see http://holonomic.net.

However, I don't really get what Lefebvre is saying in it. I think this is mainly for stylistic reasons. He tends to only talk peripherally about central notions in his argument and I find that somewhat disconcerting because it is those central notions that I am interested in seeing if they relate to my own research work.

He really does not go into how such a science of space would be conceived except a few side comments. Clearly he is really interested in tracing the evolution of the concept of space in various historical periods from absolute to abstract to differential space. But his description of differential space is very vague and I guess we must take Deleuze as the baseline for understanding it.

I noticed the blog of Ted Striphas called "Difference and Repetition" at http://striphas.blogspot.com/ and dropped off some comments there in order to see if he understands what Lefebvre is talking about any better than I do.

I am also interested in the influence between Deleuze and Lefebvre.