Patterns Of Nature

2 Pages 558 Words

“In both the arts and sciences, the programmed brain seeks elegance, which is the parsimonious and evocative description of pattern to make sense out of a confusion or detail.” - Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

I have always been amazed by the patterns of nature: The spirals of a shell, the symmetry of a snowflake, and the petals of a flower, just to name a few. Overwhelming evidence suggests that the structures of plant and animals alike seem to obey mathematical laws.

The Utah Museum of Natural History in partnership with The University of Utah is currently exhibiting “The Nature of Pattern: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Exhibited in The Gallery at Library Square, Main Salt Lake City Library, Level Four, from January 22 – March 12, 2005.

The collection is exhibited in a single, large room. Six separate Plexiglas display cases fill the room, each measuring approximately 3x3x3, each placed on a square, wooden base approximately four feet high. The display cases are located in the center of the room and are arranged in two rows, each row three cases deep, with adequate walking space between them. The cases contain items from the natural world. One contains a geometric patterned fluorite cube, whose pattern is controlled by the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms that make up the mineral. Another contains a beautiful display of the spirals of ammonite fossils (an extinct group of mollusks that died out at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 millions years ago). We also find a display of cone shells, which demonstrate the simple yet elegant patterns produced by an animal confined within this kind of space. They grow only from one end, widening and lengthening in the same proportion. A different display case contains the skull of a big horn sheep, proving that even in an animal we can detect the growth patterns of its h...