MATHS READING - ORDER AND PATTERN AS THE BASIS OF EVERYTHING (ARTY)
... The book can be absorbed on different levels. You can simply feast on the beautiful pictures. Or you can chew on Murray’s essays, which spiral off into the history of thought, science and philosophy. She writes, for example, about the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci’s discovery, in around 1200, of a seemingly divine sequence of numbers – the Fibonacci sequence – which applies to nature’s most beautiful formations. Each number in it is made by adding the previous two together: 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 and so on, and the sequence can be seen in the spirals of pine cones, snail shells, hurricanes, spiral galaxies and seed heads; in the arrangement of flower petals, leaves and tree branches. Any pair of numbers in the sequence corresponds with the golden ratio, a mathematical equation that creates the most attractive proportions. The ratio has been used in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and probably even in the building of the pyramids and the Parthenon. But why are these patterns so appealing? Could it be because of their sheer ubiquity, repeated even in our own DNA?
As science writer and editor at the journal Nature, Philip Ball points out in his foreword: 'Our brains are attuned to finding regularities in the world and using them to make predictions and deductions.' Pattern is the basis of science, language, culture and 'our place in the cosmos'. Music flows in patterns, we build in patterns, our social structures follow patterns. Which is why, he writes, 'our brains aren’t just adept at finding order and pattern, but respond to them aesthetically, rewarding ourselves with the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing universal harmonies'.
For Murray and Winteringham, pattern appreciation has become a way of life, and an exercise in mindfulness. While the pair are fascinated by nature’s grand designs, they hold a special reverence for finding symmetry in the mundane, or as they put it, 'the spaces between things, as much as things themselves'. Manhole covers, the dusty cables running along the walls of the London Underground, and undulating stripes cast by stacks of plastic sun loungers are celebrated alongside the iconic Giant’s Causeway and a cross-section of the Large Hadron Collider. 'It’s almost meditative,' says Murray. 'You’re finding connections, and there’s something very satisfying about that.'
The pair spread their belief in pattern power further with pattern-spotting field trips, even festivals. Their first, in 2013, was called Superstripe. 'We had workshops on how and why we think in linear patterns, or why a zebra is stripy,' says Murray. 'Then we had this big exhibition: a journey through stripe,' adds Winteringham. Their second, the Festival of Pattern, will run during next month’s London design festival. It includes a day-long retreat called Happy Patterns, which will include a mindfulness workshop exploring the power of curiosity and a sound-bath meditation ('vibrational patterns' as Murray jauntily puts it) ... (Flemming, 2015).
REFERENCE
Flemming, A. (2015) 'Cracking the code: how patterns make you more mindful', The Guardian 31 August [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/31/patternity-design-cracking-the-code-how-patterns-make-you-more-mindful-interview (Accessed 20 January 2015).
Flemming, A. (2015) 'Cracking the code: how patterns make you more mindful', The Guardian 31 August [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/31/patternity-design-cracking-the-code-how-patterns-make-you-more-mindful-interview (Accessed 20 January 2015).
