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Recommended Reading
Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind
by Tyler Volk
Columbia University Press, June 1995
ISBN: 023106750X
Tyler Volk, associate Professor in the Earth Systems Group of New York University's Biology Department, begins his fascinating book by explaining his borrowing the word "metapattern" from Gregory Bateson who coined it in Mind and Nature. He tells a story about Bateson's beginning a class by pulling a crab out of a bag. "Then the Socratic inquiry would begin: In what ways do the two claw-equipped limbs share a common anatomy, despite differences in pincer size? Now, how do these large front limbs resemble the walking appendages? Repeat the process with a lobster. Then, how do crabs compare with lobsters? Finally, now does this generalized arthropod pattern compare with the mammalian pattern, drawn from a parallel exercise with a human and a horse? Along the way, he would urge his responders to keep in mind what he called 'the discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.'"
This book helps us to see anew the metapatterns that surround us every day. It helps us to observe spheres, sheets and tubes, borders, binaries, centers, layers, calendars, arrows, breaks, and cycles-- and within those categories, we explore both concrete reality and ideas; physics and the arts; time and mind. The book is filled with eloquent illustrations and photos. It gives us much to ponder as we see the world with new eyes and notice "the patterns that connect."
Copyright © June 1998 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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