Living Patterns
Without realising it, we base our lives on patterns. Patterns of language, of behaviour, of sight, sound and sensation become the building blocks for all our subsequent filtering, learning and thinking. Latvian-born Isaiah Berlin was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas – what a guy! Here’s his big insight to consider: “To understand is to perceive patterns”. Does this stop you in your tracks and make you consider life or whizz over your head like a squawking seagull?! Some people will persevere to see the hidden shapes in ‘magic eye’ pictures but others soon give up and miss out. If you look around, there are indeed patterns everywhere around us. Whether your lens is a microscope, telescope or an audioscope, you will find patterns in atoms, in galaxies and sound waves. Every flower has multiple patterns beyond those obvious in the flower and petals – yet there are recognisable species within every genus. There have been many forward leaps in knowledge as scientists have found and analysed patterns.
- ‘In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it’ – Christopher Alexander