Shapes: Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts

Philip Ball's Tapestry in Three Parts

by Philip Ball

Patterns are everywhere in nature - in the ranks of clouds in the sky, the stripes of an angelfish, the arrangement of petals in flowers. Where does this order and regularity come from? It creates itself. The patterns we see come from self-organization. Whether living or non-living, scientists have found that there is a pattern-forming tendency inherent in the basic structure and processes of nature, so that from a few simple themes, and the repetition of simple rules, endless beautiful variations can arise. Part of a trilogy of books exploring the science of patterns in nature, acclaimed science writer Philip Ball here looks at how shapes form. From soap bubbles to honeycombs, delicate shell patterns, and even the developing body parts of a complex animal like ourselves, he uncovers patterns in growth and form in all corners of the natural world, explains how these patterns are self-made, and why similar shapes and structures may be found in very different settings, orchestrated by nothing more than simple physical forces. This book will make you look at the world with fresh eyes, seeing order and form even in the places you'd least expect.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Nature, Biology, Art, Mathematics, Physics

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 26, 2008

About the author

Philip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.

Reviews

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a lot of info in these three books about patterns formed both by life and by other, non-living natural processes. Sometimes it got a little too much for me to process and I started glazing over — mostly when math came into it. EVen given that, it’s still a fascinating look about how patterns form, and a good note of caution to sound about genetic determinism. Just as the colours of a calico cat aren’t determined genetically — so a clone of one calico cat would not have the same patterns as the first — neither are many other patterns in nature, whether in pelt colour and pattern or the building of nests. Instead, there seem to be sets of rules built in: processes that will occur in all genetically normal members of a species, but which won’t produce the same pattern time and again.

It’s also a good reminder that even with Batesian mimicry, there’s no intent behind it. The genetic code just happens to code for proteins which work in a particular way, ultimately producing a particular pattern. That’s obvious when we see the way other natural systems create the same patterns — rivers, sand dunes, chemical reactions.

Worth reading, definitely. And personally, I was really intrigued to learn that it was Alan Turing who actually proposed some theories of how animals get their patterned fur. Not just a code-breaking genius, clearly. Individually, I might rate each of these three books a ‘3’, but together… a 4, I think.

Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

If the phrases "bicontinous periodic minimal surface" and "reaction-diffusion process" make you break out in a cold sweat, this isn't a book for you. If your brain is still working and you're curious what daffodils and fingerprints, catalytic converters and leopard spots, or soap films and butterfly wings may have in common, I think you'll enjoy this book. I found it fascinating and look forward to reading the remaining two parts of the series.

[Jim]

Philip Ball is a prolific science writer on interesting topics that I have often planned on reading . This is starting off well.

[Swapnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I look out of my window and see the gentle sway of branches laid bare by the now receding winter. Each is a metaphor for life itself - seemingly distinct, yet arising from a larger parent and forking into smaller children, all with the same underlying structure, a symphony of recursion. Outside my direct perception lies the awareness of the humongous tree of life, whose branches extend across millenia, by which I am connected to each whale, each lichen, each bacteria, dead or alive or yet to arrive. If one could only behold the entirety of it at once, how would that tree look like?

I stand in front of the sea and gaze at the froth that glides right until the edge of my toes as the palanquin waves return to their abode, conjoined colonies of bubbles trembling and warping due to the mighty gale that blows the hair off my forehead, something in the flexible fabric resisting against total disintegration. I wonder if there is way to knit civilization in arrangements that can withstand the tremendous upheavals of time, like these little hemispheres of water and salts clinging onto the sand for dear life.

Clouds drift overhead, wet cotton blobs through which descend majestic rays of heaven. The first instinct is to use words such as 'amorphous', 'hazy', 'nebulous', but on second thought one considers if this does justice to the unique beauty that they boast of. Saying that a pebble by the road, a candle's flame and a quiver in a stream are all 'unstructured' illuminates the problem - it's not that they don't have a determinate thematic unity, it's our bewilderment at being unable to capture their form adequately in language. Even worse, it's a glaring sign of our ignorance of why they came to display the shapes that they do. What one cannot grasp should not be.

One clarification is in order - Darwin-Wallace told us that organisms acquire attributes purely as a consequence of selective advantage, but this produces a mysteriously simplistic worldview, where virtually endless possibilities are subject to trial and error until the one most suitable to survive emerges triumphant. Yet this leaves the question of the efficient cause, as the Greeks would put it, unanswered. A zebra's stripes lend it an evolutionary advantage of camouflage, but what chemical mechanisms produce them in the first place? Why do different varieties of zebras with slightly dissimilar stripes exist? Why not concentric ellipses of black and white as well?

The spirals of a nautilus, the patches on a jaguar's skin, the hexagons of a beehive, the rhythmic crests and troughs of my beating heart, the whirlpool dance of galaxies - this book does a marvelous job of describing the underlying physical processes from which arises all of nature's rich tapestry. Often we find ourselves immersing in the evocative subjective expressions of poets and painters on confronting the harmonic order of the universe, but here is a beauty of a different kind but profound and breathtaking all the same - the question of Why?, the urge to explain and reproduce what seems at first glance an accident of endless complexity.

The wonder of finally understanding the fractal geometry of the trees swaying before me.

[Jerry Chen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5–Extremely interesting concepts, but requires a vast prerequisite in mathematical patterns and reasoning.

I found that most of the book talked about mathematical patterns from abstract/invisible processes, such as chemical reactions or computational algorithms. While these are interesting in their own respect, they were a pain in the ass to wrap my head around when I came in with a biophysical perspective.

Either way, the scientific quality of the book met my expectations, which was nice. But I found that there was a huge disconnect between the explanation of patterns and their relation to what we see in biology. Yes, we need to understand how these patterns emerge, but my god it went in such great detail that I ended up retaining just the tip of the iceberg.

However, this book was still very very informative, particularly in new research in genetics. It was so interesting to learn about the true (or, atleast, scientifically accepted) nature of how genes are expressed and subsequently produce the patterns we see in nature. The logic behind the patterns themselves? Still lost to me. I blanked out for much of those sections as there was just too much, and without a strong background in mathematical patterns, I just couldn't get it, whereas the genetics part I could understand and learn from.

In all, this book is very well researched and provides very interesting concepts. I just think that the prerequisite academic background is too immense for someone with a Life Science background, even with my interest in mathematics and computational theory. Perhaps in a few years I will revisit this book and have a different thought on it, but as it stands now, my brain is fried, somewhat tickled, and a little disappointed at the disparity between the disciplines explored in the book.

[Tung Ta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book tries to give simple explanation of the natural patterning. These patterns vary from inorganic to organic world. The main point is that patterns in nature seem not to be formed randomly but they are formed under the pressure of different “mechanical forces”. Why is honeycomb hexagon? The answer is not because honeybees know that hexagon can cover the largest area with smallest amount of material. Answering this question by summoning the evolution theory is also irresponsible, just like saying that there is a High Creator named Evolution Force who helps the bees to know how to build their comb. The book gives you the gut to go further than the lazy answer to explore a more thorough explanation of our diverse natural world.

[Vijayakumar Belur · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting foray into mechanism of creation of patterns. Bit technical, but the style keeps you reading

[Mangoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The self-made tapestry" was my first encounter with Ball. I was drawn to that formidable tome by the subject matter (pattern formation at large). Nice book format, color figures, and the trademark vulgarization of Ball -- thoughtful, learned, consistent, engaging -- made it a landmark to me in the appreciation of self-organizing phaenomena. From such noble aquaintance Ball has become a favorite author of mine for hard science popularization. And I was amused to read in the introduction to this volume that the motivation to write a structured, 3-volume ranging extension and follow-up to his 1999 effort came from getting to know that it is out of print and yet highly looked for in collectionists circles. Well, I had high expectations, and I can say they were pleasantly well met in spite of Ball's wide-ranging production in recent years (Gothic architecture, music, homunculi, and more).
"Shapes" covers structural patterns, roughly Plateau's structures and reaction-diffusion (activator-inhibitor) chemo-genetic processes. The book format is more regular now, but the abundance of illustrations is still well rewarding and supporting the reading. The exposition is as tight as ever, the subject updated with very recent research results. The final discussion in the last chapter is remarkable.
Ball permeates the volume with the spirit of the inquiry of D'Arcy Thompson in "On growth and form" of early '900. Thompson, though not well acquainted with chemistry, was infatuated with nature's shapes, and critical with Darwinism as far as the mechanism of pattern creation was informed. He suspected that natural selection of random structures could not exhaust the explanation of the variety and together the recurrence of patterns seen in shell, exoskeletons, skin spots and so on (Fodor would have also something to say here on ill-defined natural selection in the first place). At the same time, he was far from the ideological belief in the existence of a (super)natural force pushing the creation of patterns in a Hegelian-like progress of Haeckel (which was later partly assumed by Nazism, and figuratively embedded in some threads of Art Nouveau). Thompson argued that physical forces had to have an unquestionable role in pattern formation: physical laws cannot be escaped, and they themselves induce constraints on what is possible in pattern space. Kauffman would say more recently that natural selection can work because it exploits natural self-organization (but Ball does not mention any of Kauffman's insights). Ball concludes the book by essentially arguing that D'Arcy was overall most probably right, and that evolution basically exploits pattern formation mechanisms embedded in physics as we know it before undergoing the effects of selection.
Turing is then arguably the most important character here, whose seminal work (well ahead of his time, and parallel to the discovery of BZ-like reactions) on morhogenesis and insight into the role of reaction and diffusion of activator agents is still the reference in ongoing researches in the field. Recent in-vivo discoveries show existence of pools of genes, common to different species, that seem to drive pattern formation (symmetry-breaking) in cells, which generally reminds of the mechanism envisioned by Turing.
Thompson's view is in a way in between that of pure Darwinists and of vitalists, as it does not call to pure chance only and yet does not indulge in void explanations based on metaphysics. Ball gives a thorough tour of evidence for the case, and as usual provides a charming and very rich read.

[Polyglot27 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving this book only 2 stars because the black and white photos could have been printed with better contrast. The line drawings are fine but the photos could have been put in any graphics software and the contrast improved.
For a book which is discussing shapes and forms it is a disgrace to have such poor quality pictures. For example, on page 9 one could hardly make out the printed circuits in the bottom picture. Again on page 31, one could hardly see the shell on the left in diagram B.
On the same subject, another good book is "The Power of Limits : Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture" by Gyorgy Doczi. Shambala, 1981.

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Ball is an excellent writer. He unfolds some of the physics that explains pattern formation in both, Nature and Culture. In particular, in this book, shapes ranging from virus capsides to body plans are revised. Mathematical details are presented in a very pedagogical fashion.

[Rob Adey · Rating 4 out of 5]

More detailed than most pop science books - but very clearly written, and well illustrated. A good augmentation to the many books I've read in recent years that fall back on purely evolutionary forces to explain all biology.

[Matthew Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating (but technical) account of how physics and chemistry can give rise to, maintain and constrain pattern and form in biology, but imo the author overstates (and this is true of Ball’s How Life Works too) how much all of it undermines the “neo-Darwinian modern synthesis.”

[Stavros Sachtouris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing experience!

[alzabo · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty fascinating; 2 or 3 were my favorites

[Peter]

So, the edition in the possession of this review has 312 pages.