I had confused in my mind -tectonic with a phrase from another book I admire: https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetroni.... I guess that's what I get for not double-checking; and you get a random book link :)
He also alludes in that final paragraph to Kant (who used the term architectonic in his philosophy) so that's a hint that he has a Kantian perspective in mind. IMO that makes that final paragraph too speculative and frankly just out of scope if we're trying to talk about the design of software. I know a bit about Kant, and it seems to me that he doesn't really have anything to say about what a theory of the design of abstractions would look like. It's all too much of a stretch. Combining philosophers and category theory (take Zalamea for example) seems to produce "architecture astronauts,".