Thursday, January 20, 2011

Pattern of Patterns

"What pattern connects
the crab to the lobster
and the orchid to the
primrose and all the four
of them to me?
And me to you? ...
The pattern which connects
is a metapattern.
It is a pattern of patterns."
- Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist
(1904 - 1980)

"A pattern of events
cannot be separated
from the space
where it occurs."
- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

6 comments:

Joy Mystic said...

Though I don't have scientific knowledge to offer, I'll venture to assume that science, medicine, architecture, mathematics, and art are leading us to believe that everything in the universe share similar composition and structure.

There is a pattern that links various and seemingly different form of creations leading to basic components.

For Alexander's quote as an illustrative thought; One reason a dictator appears within a group of people is for that same relation between a pattern and its space. You can't separate the tyrant from the space of which he was produced. A nation that produced such person should not hold itself blameless.

Am I into a similar wave length as you, Andrew, or off topic?

Andy Ilachinski said...

While (as you say) you may not "...have scientific knowledge to offer," your observation hits closer to the mark of what drives this (partially) shared reality of ours - called the universe - than most physicists! (And I make that assertion as a card-carrying physicist!) You have a strong intuition Joy!

Joy Mystic said...

I greatly appreciate the role intuition played in my life but it wasn't an easy road to trust - no blame on anyone but myself.

Still I believe intuition should be trusted and acted upon only by men who have nothing in the world to carry around... and really who of us that care-free?

Who do you trust more.. an intuitive mystic or a pragmatic Ph.D. physicist? I think you are very entitled to answer that question.

Andy Ilachinski said...

At the risk of sounding as though I'm hedging - I'm *not* - my answer is that I trust "intuition", for in its pure state - as energy - it cares not whether the transient form it happens to flow through in this or that instant is a mystic or a physicist. The deeper one's sense of stillness (spacelessless / timelessness / egolessness), the clearer one's vision of truth.

Joy Mystic said...

"Pragmatic" was the key word here vs. "intuitive" rather than the vessel, that is a mystic or a physicist because as you said both can be the same person. As a scientist, I wanted to know what do you prefer to "depend on more"? A pragmatic approach to life or intuition.

Andy Ilachinski said...

Intuition