On Growth and Form

“For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty” Source: On Growth and Form – Wikipedia

Philip Ball

“In this vision of a kind of hidden essence of nature, we can find the true nexus of Leonardo’s ‘art’ and ‘science’. We tend to think of his art as ‘lifelike’, and Vasari made the same mistake. He praises the vase of flowers that appears in one of Leonardo’s Madonnas for its ‘wonderful realism’, but …

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Douglas Hofstradter (GEB)

“The self, such as it is, arises solely because of a special type of swirly tangled pattern among the meaningless symbols.” “meaning comes in despite one’s best efforts to keep symbols meaningless!” “When a system of “meaningless” symbols has patterns in it that accurately track, or mirror, various phenomena in the world, then that tracking …

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Paradox

What are the connections between variables and constraints and limitations within a system? Every wave is different yet similar in form. I cannot tell it to move in a different way that is outside of its universal design. Its form is a design of it’s functions. The water flows over, under, and through the rocks …

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Max Cole

Max Cole “my work exists through a process of being lived, it being comprised of innumerable individual handmade marks which require total emersion and concentration, time, existence and the work becoming fused. There is no other way to produce the work except for a depth of engagement requiring the abandonment of self and this process …

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Roman Opalka

Roman Opalka (1931-2011) “Time as we live it and as we create it embodies our progressive disappearance; we are at the same time alive and in the face of death–that is the mystery of all living beings. The consciousness of this inevitable disappearance broadens our experiences without diminishing our joy. There is always the omnipresent …

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Numbers

0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000………….. = 0/9 = 0 0.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111…………… = 1/9 0.2222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222…………… = 2/9 0.333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333…………… = 3/9 = 1/3 0.444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444……………… = 4/9 0.555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555……………… = 5/9 0.666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666………….. = 6/9 = 2/3 0.777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777…………….. = 7/9 0.888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888…………….. = 8/9 0.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999………… = 9/9 = 3/3 = 1!  

Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) “Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of ‘being and becoming!’ That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world.” Ernst Haeckel Ernst Haeckel, 1866

Etienne-Jules Marey

Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) “relation of space to time that is the essence of motion”. La méthode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales (1878)   —

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) Inquiry into motion with a camera. The ability to breakdown movement, revealing the complex in-betweens of mundane, everyday gestures, sitting, standing, walking…, freezing figures in mid air, defying physics, exposing the process of motion which the human eye can not see. Muybridge, photographic motion studies. 1872 – 1878 —

Stephan Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram A New Kind of Science “…nature samples a broader swath of the computational universe than mathematics and engineering. But it too is limited, whether because natural selection tends to favor incremental change, or because some physical process just follows one particular rule.” “Principle of Computational Equivalence which implies that even when the underlying …

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Experiments in Motion

“Consider the beautiful repetition of tiles on a roof, waves in the ocean, cells in the body, the scales of a fish, the blades of grass, the bricks in a wall, the hair on a head… The repetition, by itself, already begins to create a satisfying harmony. Somehow the sense of order in a thing …

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Leonardo da Vinci

I look at Leonardo da Vinci’s illustrations, diagrams, illustrating the theories of light and shade, sketches, illustrating the theory of proportion of the human figure in motion, and I imagine Leonard da Vinci watching water whirling in an eddy, studying the motions of currents, gazing and lost in its flow. I think and I wonder …

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