Thursday, February 24, 2011

How Nature's Patterns Form

If you want to create patterns," apply stress to a system. "Patterns arise when the symmetry of a system is broken." I discuss the connection among emergent complexity, patterns, and symmetry-breaking in Diaphysics. This article argues that symmetry-breaking occurs when stress is put on a system (that stress can occur between genetic constraints and physical constraints during development -- causing a far-from-equilibrium state). More, "The similarity in patterns from system to system occur when the systems have similar symmetry, rather than because the systems are made from the same materials." This is why we see a universality in such patterns.

Literary fiction emerges from stress being placed on the writing. Rhythms and rhymes in poetry. Repetitions of words, images, metaphors, ideas, etc. Many good rules result in the emergence of patterns. It would not be surprising if those patterns deomonstrated fractal geometry in word distribution, as do the patterns being investigated in the whort article above. Investigating such patterns and how they emerge is just as naturalistic as Darwinian investigations, though of a somewhat different kind. But I would argue that they are just as important, in the same way that self-organization, developmental patterns, etc. are as important to understanding development and organization in organisms as are puerly Darwinian explanations. They complement each other, and contribute to a more complex Darwinain paradigm.

No comments:

Post a Comment