Status
Available
Collection
Genres
Publication
Columbia University Press (1995), 296 pages
Description
In the interdisciplinary tradition of Buckminster Fuller's work, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature, and Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics, Metapatterns embraces both nature and culture, seeking out the grand-scale patterns that help explain the functioning of our universe.
User reviews
LibraryThing member kratib
Tyler Volk is an earth scientist. That's one of the few scientific fields today where it is actually desired to tend more towards holism than towards reductionism, i.e. to study whole systems as interactions of smaller subsystems, building up rising levels of understanding rather than endlessly
Metapatterns seems to be the result of Volk's philosophical insights that parallel the holistic nature of his work. In it, he categorizes phenomena that occur on different levels of reality (atomic, macroscopic, mental, spiritual) according to common patterns - forms - that these phenomena exhibit. For example, the sphere is a form that exists at many levels of reality and that has certain common properties across all these levels, such as optimality / perfection.
The book is not just a collection of unrelated observations. The author builds a coherent system of patterns, starting from primordial ones and assembling them to form more complex wholes. Towards the end, we start getting glimpses of how the complexity around us might be arising from simple primitives, which I imagine is the author's original thesis.
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subdividing fine points.Metapatterns seems to be the result of Volk's philosophical insights that parallel the holistic nature of his work. In it, he categorizes phenomena that occur on different levels of reality (atomic, macroscopic, mental, spiritual) according to common patterns - forms - that these phenomena exhibit. For example, the sphere is a form that exists at many levels of reality and that has certain common properties across all these levels, such as optimality / perfection.
The book is not just a collection of unrelated observations. The author builds a coherent system of patterns, starting from primordial ones and assembling them to form more complex wholes. Towards the end, we start getting glimpses of how the complexity around us might be arising from simple primitives, which I imagine is the author's original thesis.
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Language
Original language
English
Physical description
296 p.; 9.26 x 1.03 inches
ISBN
023106750X / 9780231067508