So much in life is composed of recurrent designs. The zigzags traced by bolts of lightning, the rings inside a felled tree, the threads on a cobweb, the tessellations of a honeycomb, the twists of a conch shell, the petals of a chrysanthemum…A city also teems with fractal geometry. The catacombs beneath Camden Market, the arches of Paddington Station; the Neo-Gothic ornamentation of the Houses of Parliament…People, no less, are formed by repeated habits and conventions. The Mesopotamian tablets, too, embody a series of patterns whose meaning Arthur is determined to discover.
