Waves of wind-blown desert sand follow a sinuous course resembling the stripes of a zebra or marine fish. In the lattice-shaped shells of microscopic sea creatures we see the same angles and intersections as in the walls of bubbles in a foam. The forks of lightning reflect the branches of a river or a tree.
The natural world seems conceived by universal patterns, and some forms seem more common than others. That's what explains Philip Ball in his book The Self-made Tapestry.
Shapes and patterns
Nature commonly weaves its tapestry through self-organization, without using a master plan or blueprint, but through simple and local interactions between its components, whether grains of sand, diffusing molecules or living cells, which give rise to spontaneous patterns.
Many of these patterns are universal: spirals, spots and stripes, branches, honeycombs.
In some ways, Ball's book is an offshoot of a classic: About growth and the shape, of D'Arcy Thompson:
On Growth and Form, the greatest prose work of 20th-century science, highlights the role of physics and mechanics in determining the shape and structure of organisms. Thompson reveals himself as a great scientist sensitive to the fascination and beauty of the natural world with a style that has led the specialized press to describe his work as "as good literature as it is science." a discourse on science as if it were a question of humanity.
Adrian Bejan, professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, has another book simulating: Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature.
In it he only addresses three natural forms: the aborescent networks (lungs, river basins, etc.), the circular section (of blood vessels) and the watermelon cut-shaped section of rivers.
Perhaps the most curious recent book on this subject is that of Jorge Wagensberg: The rebellion of the forms:
Around us, an enormous number of objects seem to share a very small number of shapes: although it did not have to be this way, nature exhibits rhythm and harmony. Furthermore, although it did not have to be that way, nature seems intelligible. This essay vibrates with the ambition to address the perplexity that these verifications can raise. Why are certain shapes (spheres, hexagons, spirals, helices, parabolas, cones, waves, catenaries, and fractals) especially common? Why precisely these and not others? How do they emerge? How do they persevere?
According to Wagensberg, each of these very frequent shapes usually appears to perform a main function: the sphere protects, the hexagon paves, the spiral packs, the helix grips, the tip penetrates, the wave displaces, the parabola emits and receives, the catenary Hold on and the fractals colonize.
An almost unknown author, in fact, tried to write a novel dedicated to each of these forms. You can learn more about him in the following video:
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The news
Nature is full of patterns: the most common ways to compose everything
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.