Today, I started searching for patterns in nature, thinking that pattern makers are trying to mirror nature. We see these remarkable patterns in the world around us, and we copy them and reproduce them as objects. Patterns of honeycombs, and Komodo dragon scales, and spirals found in cactus. And then I searched for the oldest life on earth and found a one-celled creature. But I thought this level was still too high, too ‘gross’, so I searched for molecular structures and saw some beautiful patterns. And then I searched for atomic structures, and found a beautiful hexagonal matrix pattern for silicon that is visible at the atomic scale in an article: The World According to Nanometers. Again, I have seen this pattern in quilts.The image (above is) of a silicon surface, captured by Taisuke Ohta, Fumio Ohuchi, and Marjorie Olmstead using a scanning tunneling microscope, patterns are visible at the atomic scale. Bright spots are individual atoms.
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artsci.washington.edu/news/WinterSpring04/Photos/nano_image.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artsci.washington.edu/news/WinterSpring04/Nanotech.htm&h=300&w=300&sz=182&hl=en&start=50&tbnid=WS3-ztUHH3tunM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Datomic%2Bpatterns%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26hs%3DOTK%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
In the late 1920s, an American quilt revival brought in a new color palette of pastel prints. Quilts made from these fabrics are sometimes referred to as Depression Quilts, since the styles and fabrics continued through the Great Depression. Mamie ordered her fabrics from a catalog, either Montgomery Ward or Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Now, the chances are quite likely that ‘Grandma’ never used an atomic microscope. And yet how did she know to replicate the atomic structure of silicon in her quilt pattern? This is the mystery that I’m trying to solve. I want to know how these two things are connected.
Norah Gaughan has written a new book ‘Knitting Nature’ April 2006 and she has based her patterns on natural patterns
http://www.berroco.com/knitbits/html/KB137_interview.html
Again, I’m thinking, ‘So what? People imitate nature? That is something we’ve all known about for a long time, right?” True, but what we haven’t discovered is how these patterns may be used in our own minds to organize information.
What type of information might be organized in a hexagonal pattern? We commonly organize and understand information that is organized in a graph, as a matrix. This is a pretty standard form of information organization that has been used for several centuries.
There is something quite circular with patterns, and our understanding of them.
We see pattern structures in nature at all levels of scale, from the atomic on up to plants and trees and shells and landscape. We ‘learn’ these patterns through living in our environment and we record these patterns in our memories. Then we attach information onto these structures at a low level, learn how to intellectually abstract from real, concrete (physical) instances into an abstract mental structure, and we see the same structure again in a virtual fashion… that we then describe using mathematics. This is considered ‘higher thinking’.
So, we internalize the patterned structures that we see in our environment, load these structures up with information until we can achieve a mental level of abstraction, so that we can create or replicate using our own minds and hands what we see out in the real world. Weird. We internalize and then we externalize. We are not just pattern recognizers, but we then also learn to become pattern generators. This is a uniquely human capability. This is what creativity is all about. Seeing patterns, internalizing patterns, abstracting patterns and making more patterns.
We are pattern recognizers, pattern recorders and pattern makers. Truly.
Patterns are an efficient way for physical matter to be organized. Patterns are rather social, when you think about them. Individual items are held together in relationship by an ‘agreed’ structure of organization, just like a society of humans. There are roles and rules.
As below, so above.
