BEAUTY IN THE PATTERNS OF NATURE

I was trying to understand the pattern required to draw a proportionate number of feathers on a peacock when I happened upon this wonderful wikipedia entry on Patterns in Nature.

So many of the images moved me: the ripples on sand dunes, that I have seen at the bottom of the water in the sand on beaches around the world, and in the sky above at different moments. The chameleon's curled tail and beard with variation of colours depending on the back ground, much like the octopus, whose ability to morph into other shades is super human.

But what I liked the most was the logical breakdown in the kinds of patterns. I don't even know all of these concepts, but the groupings made instant sense.

Symmetry is familiar. Many things have bilateral (mirror) symmetry. Starfish fivefold symmetry is found in other like sea animals. Crystals, like snowflakes are often sixfold. Plants often have rotational symmetry, like an open flower with its petals arranged around its central axis, or the seeds of an apple cut in half. Even asymmetry, like an orchid has its beauty, like the yin and yang of aesthetic.

Fractiles are repeat iterations, but in nature this is finite. Ferns, and peacock feathers, I would argue, can only propogate in a few levels. The Lichtenberg patterns of lightening on skin, tree patterns, rivers branching seen from the sky, even ocean waves repeat. A snowflake fits in a type of fractile pattern that is called emergence*.

Spirals are the fascination of many who come upon Fibonacci's golden ratio. Nautilus shells, sunflowers, pine apples, pine cones and even red cabbage in cross section show this sequence in all its beauty.

Chaos even has a place in the patterns of nature. Famously called "The Butterfly Effect", the way a snake crosses your path in the forest and the winds cross the surface of the earth is explainable by astute minds.

Waves and dunes are classed together.

Spheres like bubbles form foam when massed together, and this is the jumping off point to Buckminster and his tetrahedron and the ever evolving soccer ball.

Tessellations are  my obsession. From Europe to DC, the floors and ceilings are massive examples of repeating "tiles". In nature, the bee's honeycomb, crystal rocks, the checkerboard spring lily are all great examples.

Cracks, made under stress, may not be classically beautiful, but from the patina of old paint to the Giant's Causeway, to the wrinkles on a loved ones face, these can be seen as beauty.

Spots and stripes can have unique fingerprints and are always interesting in their variety.

Lastly patterns I cannot explain but would love to replicate have a Mandala effect of relaxing my brain in the beauty of complexity. I feel that simple symmetry is our everyday beauty, but I thrill with the difficult to grasp patterns of nature that are so much rarer, and delight in being attracted to the pattern of it even when I don't understand it.

This is something I could study endlesslessly. I think their might even be some room for improving the nominclature of the above ideas. Or maybe, at least, a better wikipedia entry. In the meantime, check out the classifications of snowflakes. It's crazy how much study and documentation has been made on this frequent winter occurrence in these temperant climates where we live. Because I am not the only one who finds the endless combinations and patterns beautiful and fascinating!

*This term was coined by philosopher G.H. Lewes and is described as in such an enticing way.  He says, "Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same – their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference.