A Site by Jeff Bloom & Tyler Volk
This is the home site for The Pattern Underground — a working group dedicated to exploring the science (and art) of patterns. We are particularly interested in metapatterns (a term coined by Gregory Bateson). More information on metapatterns is available from the "Theoretical Background" page, which is linked to in the Navigation panel on the left.
We are interested in disciplinary and transdisciplinary explorations, theoretical development, and research into metapatterns and other ubiquitous patterns. Works in progress are welcomed in the general project sections. More formal and complete pieces can be submitted to our journal, which is now in the planning stages. This journal will be a peer-reviewed, online, and free journal. People interested in being on the editorial board and/or in reviewing submitted articles, please send an email to either of the editors (Tyler Volk or Jeff Bloom).
In order to participate on this site, you must be a member. Membership is free. Click on the "How to join this site?" link in Navigation panel.
As a member, you can post materials, participate in forums, create your own member's page, and be involved in an exciting new group. We hope to organize a periodic meeting, as well.
Please join us in this transdisciplinary effort.
Please go to the Participating and Submitting Work for more information about how you can engage on this site.
A List of Metapatterns
by Tyler Volk:Spheres | Tubes | Sheets | Borders—Pores | Centers |
Layers: | • Hierarchy | • Holarchy | • Holons | • Clonons |
Binaries | Arrows | Breaks | Cycles | Calendars—Clocks |
SEE: Tyler Volk's work and references at https://metapatterns.wikidot.com/bkgd:backgroundindex
Clusters | Rigidity—Flexibility | Emergence | Webs | Triggers |
Turbulence | Spirals (Volk's Time + Cycles) | Meanders | Space/Void | Bursts |
SEE: Kappraff (1991), Stevens (1974), Bejan & Zane (2012), Barabási (2010)
What are some other metapatterns?
Metapatterns are overarching or fundamental patterns of patterns. Typically, we may think of something like a chess board is made up of a checkered pattern. Certainly this checkered design is a pattern, but not necessarily a "meta"-pattern. Metapatterns appear in two or more other contexts or disciplines of study and have similar functions. Such a sharing of functionality across contexts is a characteristic of metapatterns, even though specific context-related functions may vary. For instance, a cycle is a process that maintains some system. This general definition applies across contexts. However, the Kreb's Citric Acid Cycle (which produces energy as ATP molecules fits within this general function, but also has context-specific functions of using oxygen and nutrients to produce ATP from ADP molecules, and producing CO2 & H2O.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
NYU |
The NYU Student Journal of Metapatterns Volume I is NOW AVAILABLE! |
Tyler Volk's New Book: Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be — a further exploration of metapatterns
Book is available from:
|
|
Nora Bateson's book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns Now Available from Amazon |
|
Nora Bateson's award winning film: An Ecology of Mind: A Daughter's Portrait of Gregory Bateson Now Available on Vimeo |
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Featured Sites:
- See Dazzling Botanical Imagery through the Ages — from Atlas Obscura
- Eveline Kolijn — Science, art, and fantasy
- Biology of Story — Interesting exploration of patterns
Featured Videos
Tyler Volk relives two insights that led him to seek patterns and principles in the single, great field of everything. In one, he notes spheres at various scales. Second, he connects with William Blake’s “to see in the world in a grain of sand.” Key moments such as these, when he was just out of architecture school, developed into findings for his books Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind and, featured here, Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be (until December 30, 2018, Q2C is available at 30% discount at the website of Columbia University Press website, using the code word “quark”). Q2C was favorably reviewed by Science (http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/201…). Tyler is professor of biology and environmental studies at New York University.
The copyright for materials on this site lies with the author(s) of those materials.
The Pattern Underground © 2009 Tyler Volk & Jeffrey W. Bloom