“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
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G. H. Hardy, was a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis (1877-1947),
A Mathematician’s Apology (1941)
“When I muse about memes, I often find myself picturing an ephemeral flickering pattern of sparks leaping from brain to brain, screaming “Me, me!”.”
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Douglas Hofstadter, American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics, Pulitzer Prize laureate,
Metamagical themas: questing for the essence of mind and pattern, Basic Book, 1985, p. 52.
“Much education today consists of a high degree of specialization, which tends to give a person tunnel vision and a narrow perspective about the actual interrelationships of all physical phenomena. Students of the future would be encouraged to view the world in a more holistic manner; accordingly, they would be able to converse intelligently across various disciplines.”
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Jacque Fresco, self-educated structural designer, philosopher of science, concept artist, educator, and futurist,
The Best That Money Can’t Buy: Beyond Poverty, Politics, & War, Global Cyber Visions, 2002
(tnx mymindtank)
“Understanding order begins with understanding patterns.”
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R. Buckminster Fuller, American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International (1895-1983)
“Coral reefs are sometimes called “the cities of the sea”, and part of the argument is that we need to take the metaphor seriously: the reef ecosystem is so innovative because it shares some defining characteristics with actual cities. These patterns of innovation and creativity are fractal: they reappear in recognizable form as you zoom in and out, from molecule to neuron to pixel to sidewalk. Whether you’re looking at original innovations of carbon-based life, or the explosion of news tools on the web, the same shapes keep turning up. (…)
When life gets creative, it has a tendency to gravitate toward certain recurring patterns, whether those patterns are self-organizing, or whether they are deliberately crafted by human agents.”
“The pattern, and it alone, brings into being and causes to pass away and confers purpose, that is to say, value and meaning, on all there is. To understand is to perceive patterns. (…) To make intelligible is to reveal the basic pattern.”
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Isaiah Berlin, British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian, (1909-1997),
The proper study of mankind: an anthology of essays, Chatto & Windus, 1997, p. 129.
See also: ☞ ‘To understand is to perceive patterns’ - B. Fuller, Powell, Johnson, West, Kurzweil & video narration by J. Silva
“Q: One of my favorite definitions of time is that time is what stops everything happening at once. I wonder if music is what stops noise happening all at once? (…)
I’m sure when the first abstract paintings appeared, people said, “No figure, no structure,” etc… The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.
I wanted to hear a music that could create an atmosphere that would support your attention but still let you decide where it was directed.”
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Brian Eno, English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music, in conversation with the novelist David Mitchell,
Brian Eno: Success ruins artists, Salon.com, Oct 1, 2011
“The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”
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Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize laureate (1887-1961)
Ray Kurzweil: “I describe myself as a patternist, and believe that if you put matter and energy in just the right pattern you create something that transcends it. Technology is a good example of that: you put together lenses and mechanical parts and some computers and some software in just the right combination and you create a reading machine for the blind. It’s something that transcends the semblance of parts you’ve put together. That is the nature of technology, and it’s the nature of the human brain. Biological molecules put in a certain combination create the transcending properties of human intelligence; you put notes and sounds together in just the rightcombination, and you create a Beethoven symphony or a Beatles song. So patterns have a power that transcends the parts of that pattern.”
