Dandelions & Hyperbolic Browsers

I recently came across a paper that discusses how the cognitive styles of oral cultures are different from print cultures. Oral cultures represent an event like the spokes of a wheel with a central point and simultaneous branches extending out from the centre. Oral cultures value parallelism and wholism and the personification of nature. Print cultures are linear in the sense they focus on one path through time/space and cognitively represent an event as a process with a beginning, middle and an end, usually in detailed hierarchical trees.

Visual Metaphor, Cultural Knowledge, and the New Rhetoric

Robert N. St. Clair

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/LIB/LIB8.html

I started wondering if these two very different cognitive styles might not just be part of a larger structure, and I remembered the structure of the hyperbolic browser that I saw more than 10 years ago. It looks like a 2-dimensional representation of a dandelion flower that's gone to seed (in all its fluffy glory).

The trees act as branches. They are primarily linear. And they grow from the centre radially.

And the hyperbolic browser image reminded me again of the E8 mathematical structure.

For more information on hyperbolic browsers:
http://www2.sapdesignguild.org/community/book_people/
visualization/controls/hypBrowser.htm

What a laugh to think that the structure of human thought may be echoed in the structure of the dandelion flower.

(Personally, I love dandelions and encourage them in lawn and garden. I've never thought of them as a weed).

Hexagon as a Spatial Average - Woldenberg

Accession Number : AD0722022

Title : Geography and the Properties of Surfaces. The Hexagon as a Spatial Average.

Descriptive Note : Interim rept.,

Corporate Author : HARVARD UNIV CAMBRIDGE MASS LAB FOR COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS

Personal Author(s) : Woldenberg,Michael J.

Report Date : 15 OCT 1970

Pagination or Media Count : 28

Abstract : The paper demonstrates that river basin areas and central place market areas tend to be hexagonal. River basins are bounded by ridge lines which meet three at a corner. Few ridge lines cannot define a corner, and more ridge lines are improbable. The nomenclature of river basins following Warntz (1968) and Schumm (1956) is extended. Market areas also must have three-edge corners. Graustein (1932) showed that large networks with three-edged corners must tend to have six sides per polygon, a relation that follows from Euler's law. The most if not all commonly occurring natural networks have three-edged corners, the polygons tend to be hexagons. (Author)

Descriptors : (*GEOGRAPHY, GRAPHICS), (*RIVERS, MATHEMATICAL MODELS), HYDRAULIC MODELS, NETWORKS, SURFACES

Subject Categories : HYDROLOGY, LIMNOLOGY AND POTAMOLOGY

Distribution Statement : APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0722022

Hexagonal Columns, Giants Causeway - Ireland

Natural hexagonal volcanic columns in Ireland. They look similar to the dinosaur scales.

Photo: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bjandtony.com/images/070410_35_DUB_Giants_Causeway.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.bjandtony.com/200704NorthernIreland.html&h=480&w=640&sz=38&hl=en&start=82&sig2=BMtLaPrsEM5WkNgCpamQDA&um=1&tbnid=7n2gd59kFgPGbM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&ei=xZJWSP-BDJfiigG_uq2QAw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgiants%2Bcauseway%26start%3D80%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

Hexagonal Pattern of Dinosaur Skin

A rare mummified dinosaur has been discovered in North Dakota. Notice the beautiful hexagonal pattern of scales. This mummy is thought to be 67 million years old.

From National Geographic:

A newly found "dino mummy" has exquisitely preserved bones, skin, and possibly muscle and internal organs, scientists have announced.

The duck-billed dinosaur, named Dakota, is already changing theories of how the extinct creatures looked and moved—and may contain preserved ancient proteins that could better reveal the dino family tree.

Photograph by Tyler Lyson © 2007 National Geographic