In Classic Essays on Photography , ed. Alan Trachtenberg, trans. See his Nonindifferent Nature , trans. Worringer contrasts the organic and the crystalline as compositional strategies. Each is an a priori will to form that expresses a culture's relation to the world.
Organic forms express a harmonious unity where humanity feels at one with the world.
They base their representations on natural forms, sustained by the belief that natural laws support and lend them truth. Alternatively, the crystalline represents a will to abstraction. When a culture feels that it is in conflict with the world, that events are chaotic and hostile, it tends to produce pure geometric forms as an attempt to pattern and transcend this chaos. For an alternative translation see Negotiations xx.