Patterns of Organic Energy

"'Wu Li' was more than poetic. It was the best definition of physics that the conference would produce. It caught that certain something, that living quality that we were seeking to express in a book, that thing without which physics becomes sterile. 'Wu' can mean either 'matter' or 'energy.' 'Li' is a richly poetic word. It means 'universal order' or 'universal law.' It also means 'organic patterns.' The grain in a panel of wood is Li. The organic pattern on the surface of a leaf is also Li, and so is the texture of a rose petal. In short, Wu Li, the Chinese word for physics, means 'patterns of organic energy' ('matter/ energy' [Wu] + 'universal order/organic patterns' [Li]). This is remarkable since it reflects a world view which the founders of western science (Galileo and Newton) simply did not comprehend, but toward which virtually every physical theory of import in the twentieth century is pointing!"

-  Gary Zukav (1942 - )
The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Transmission in All Directions

"A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration - it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

Urgent, unique, uninformed about history and theory, beyond the imagination, central to a sphere without surface, its becoming is unimpeded, energetically broadcast. There is no escape from its action. It does not exist as One of a series of discrete steps, but as transmission in all directions from the field's center. It is inextricably synchronous with all other, sounds, non-sounds, which latter, received by other sets than the ear, operate in the same manner.

A sound accomplishes nothing;
without it life would not last out the instant. "

- John Cage (1912 - 1992)
Silence

Holistic Morphology

"Since nothing can exist that does not fulfil the conditions which render its existence possible, the different parts each being must be co-ordinated in such a way as to render possible the existence of the being as a whole, not only in itself, but also in its relations with other beings, and the analysis of these conditions often leads to general laws which are as certain as those which are derived from calculation or from experiment."

- Georges Cuvier (1769 - 1832)

Amorphous Morphology

"I claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid - a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry - Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity ... The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being 'formless,' to investigate the morphology of the 'amorphous.' Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel."

- Benoit Mandelbrot (1924 - 2010)
The Fractal Geometry of Nature

Fungal States of Minds

"Fungal organisms can perceive the outer world in a way similar to what animals sense. Does that mean that they have full awareness of their environment and themselves? Is a fungus a conscious entity? In laboratory experiments we found that fungi produce patterns of electrical activity, similar to neurons. The new field of fungal consciousness is opening in front of us. Let us discuss directions of future studies. Do fungi have holistic states of mind? Do they combine/modify such states? How many fungal states of mind could be described? Do fungi create specific relational contexts? Or are they, on the contrary, not capable of having holistic states of mind, and are just following completely prefixed patterns? At which extent can we include fungi affects into such cognitive processing? Fungal chemotaxis could be part of such proto-emotional states. A deeper consciousness state allows us to understand and accept sacrificing our 'self' for higher purposes (martyrs, heroes).

...

Given the peculiarity of fungi morphology and degree of connection, we may imagine how radically different computational schemes are embedded into a fungal consciousness. For example, rather than 3-dimensional visual perception, holographic perception might be possible, considering the quasi-flat distribution of mycelia and its mechanoceptive reconstruction of moving objects (animals) at the upper boundary layer. Non-causal consciousness might arise from this specific perception framework, eventually hindering the time perception. All of these remain open questions for further investigations."

- Andy Adamatzky, et al., "Fungal States of Minds"

Little Ripples

 

"The waves of the sea, the little ripples on the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy bay between the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so many riddles of form, so many problems of morphology.

...

Our own study of organic form, which we call by Goethe's name of Morphology, is but a portion of that wider still Science of Form which deals with the forms assumed by matter under all aspects and conditions, and, in a still wider sense, with forms which are theoretically imaginable.

...

We rise from the conception of form to an understanding of the forces which gave rise to it... in the representation of form we see a diagram of forces in equilibrium, and in the comparison of kindred forms we discern the magnitude and the direction of the forces which have sufficed to convert the one form into the other.

...

We have come to the
edge of a world of which
we have no experience, and
where all our preconceptions
must be recast."

- D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860 - 1948)
On Growth and Form

Mathematical Beauty

"The harmony of the
world is made manifest
in Form and Number,
and the heart and soul
and all the poetry of
Natural Philosophy are
embodied in the concept
of mathematical beauty."

- D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860 - 1948)

Postscript. As may be the case with many of you, my day-job constraints leave me precious little time to devote to purely aesthetic pleasures (notwithstanding those that occasionally overlap with more mathematical pursuits). Sometimes, as now, even my weekend time is filled mostly with staring at gibberish on a computer screen, and pounding away at my keyboard to produce picture-less reams of technical reports (even as I day-dream of month-long photo-safaris in far-away lands). Thus, the short walks my wife and I take through our neighborhood after breakfast each day have become immeasurably important physical and spiritual oases for me. The simple pleasure of encountering beautifully haphazard arrangements of natural forms rejuvenates and nourishes my soul. The images in the triptych above were taken no more than a few minutes apart during a walk that itself lasted less than a half hour. But what a joy it is to stumble upon such humble transcendent beauty hiding in plain sight! The great polymath Thompson's book, On Growth and Form (the first edition of which came out in 1917, and which to this day remains an extraordinarily beautiful book to read) is essentially a 1100+ page erudite argument that biology can be reduced to mathematics (a sentiment that a much younger version of myself would have been happy to accept): "It behooves us always to remember that in physics it has taken great men to discover simple things. They are very great names indeed which we couple with the explanation of the path of a stone, the droop of a chain, the tints of a bubble, the shadows in a cup. It is but the slightest adumbration of a dynamical morphology that we can hope to have until the physicist and the mathematician shall have made these problems of ours their own." For those of you interested in exploring (taking a deep-dive, really, into) the broader entanglement of art and science, here are some slides I used for a 2017 presentation at a Humanities and Technology Association conference (held that year in Newport, RI). This lecture is one of three I've given in (relatively) recent years during which I wore both of my hats, as physicist and photographer. The other two lectures were given at the American Center for Physics (College Park, MD in 2009) and at the Morrison House (Alexandria, VA in 2011).

Signs of Nature

"Morphology rests on the conviction that everything that exists must signify and reveal itself. From the first physical and chemical elements to the spiritual expression of man we find this principle to hold. We turn immediately to that which has form. The inorganic, the vegetative, the animal, the human. Each one signifies itself, each one appears as what it is to our external and our internal sense. Form is something changeable, something becoming, something passing. The doctrine of metamorphosis is the key to all of the signs of nature."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
Quoted in Morphology: Questions on Method and Language