SYNTHESIS OF

THE NATURAL ORDER

CRUZ, GWYNETH WELCH S.

ARC - 2102

Page 1 of 5
CHAPTER 1: THE NATURAL ORDER

Natural Order is the orderly system compromising the physical universe and
functioning according to natural as distinguished from human or supernatural laws. The
examples of the natural order are stars’ formation, patterns of trips, patterns of spots, six-
fold symmetry, bright circular halo, and everything or patterns that one person have seen
are called mathematics. By using mathematics to organize and systematize our ideas
about patterns, we have discovered a great secret: nature's patterns are not just there to
be admired, they are vital clues to the rules that govern natural processes.

Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These
patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically.
Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams,
tessellations, cracks and stripes. Early Greek philosophers studied pattern, with Plato,
Pythagoras and Empedocles attempting to explain order in nature. The modern
understanding of visible patterns developed gradually over time.

Four Hundred years ago, German Astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote a small
book called, The Six-Cornered Snowflake, as a new year’s gift to his sponsor. In that book
he said that snowflake must be made by packing tiny identical units together. This was
before the theory that matter is made up of atoms. Kepler performed didn’t do any
experiment, he just thought very hard about various bits and pieces of common
knowledge. His main evidence was the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes, which is a
natural consequence of regular packing. If you place a large number of identical coins on
a table and try to pack them as closely as possible, then you get a honeycomb
arrangement, in which every coin-except those at the edges-is surrounded by six others,
arranged in a perfect hexagon.

Mathematics, physics and chemistry can explain patterns in nature at different

levels. Patterns in living things are explained by the biological processes of natural
selection and sexual selection. Studies of pattern formation make use of computer models
to simulate a wide range of patterns.

Mathematics seeks to discover and explain abstract patterns or regularities of all

kinds. Visual patterns in nature find explanations in chaos theory, fractals, logarithmic
spirals, topology and other mathematical patterns. For example, L-systems form
convincing models of different patterns of tree growth.

What are patterns in Nature? Nothing in nature happens without a reason, all of
these patterns have an important reason to exist and they also happen to be beautiful to
watch. Check out examples of some of these patterns and you may be able to spot a few
the next time you go for a walk. A fractal is a detailed pattern that looks similar at any

Page 2 of 5
scale and repeats itself over time. A fractal's pattern gets more complex as you observe
it at larger scales. This example of a fractal shows simple shapes multiplying over time,
yet maintaining the same pattern. Examples of fractals in nature are snowflakes, trees
branching, lightning, and ferns. A spiral is a curved pattern that focuses on a center point
and a series of circular shapes that revolve around it. Examples of spirals are pine cones,
pineapples, hurricanes. The reason for why plants use a spiral form like the leaf picture
above is because they are constantly trying to grow but stay secure. A spiral shape
causes plants to condense themselves and not take up as much space, causing it to be
stronger and more durable against the elements. A Voronoi pattern provides clues to
nature’s tendency to favor efficiency: the nearest neighbor, shortest path, and tightest fit.
Each cell in a Voronoi pattern has a seed point. Everything inside a cell is closer to it than
to any other seed. The lines between cells are always halfway between neighboring
seeds. Other examples of Voronoi patterns are the skin of a giraffe, corn on the cob,
honeycombs, foam bubbles, the cells in a leaf, and a head of garlic.

Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence. Patterns possess

utility as well as beauty. Once we have learned to recognize a background pattern,
exceptions suddenly stand out. The Greeks called them planetes, meaning "wanderer,"
a term retained in our word "planet." It took a lot longer to understand the patterns of
planetary motion than it did to work out why stars seem to move in nightly circles. One
difficulty is that we are inside the Solar System, moving along with it, and things that look
simple from outside often look much more complicated from inside. The planets were
clues to the rules behind gravity and motion.

The simplest mathematical objects are numbers, and the simplest of nature's
patterns are numerical. For example, the phases of the moon, the year is three hundred
and sixty-five days long-roughly. People have two legs, cats have four, insects have six,
and spiders have eight. Starfish have five arms. A very curious pattern indeed occurs in
the petals of flowers. the number of petals is one of the numbers that occur in the strange
sequence three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five, and eighty-nine like
the Fibonacci sequence which each number is obtained by adding the previous two
numbers together.

Numerology is the easiest-and consequently the most dangerous-method for

finding patterns. It is easy because anybody can do it, and dangerous for the same
reason. The difficulty of numerology lies in distinguishing significant numerical patterns
from accidental ones. Kepler for example, was fascinated about the nature’s pattern. He
devised a theory for the existence of six planets mainly Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. With this he also discovered an unusual pattern relating the orbital
period of every planet, like the time it takes to go a complete revolution around the sun

Page 3 of 5
and to the distance of every planet from it. Kepler found that if you take the cube of the
distance of any planet from the Sun and divide it by the square of its orbital period, you
always get the same number. It was not an especially elegant number, but it was the
same for all six planets. This numerical pattern was one of the key steps toward Isaac
Newton's theory of gravity, which has explained all sorts of puzzles about the motion of
stars and planets. The big problem with numerological pattern-seeking is that it generates
millions of accidentals for each universal. In addition to numerical patterns, there are
geometric ones. There are two excuses. First, the title sounds better without the "and
shapes." Second, mathematical shapes can always be reduced to number.

A general shape is a collection of dots, and can be represented as a list of pairs of

numbers. However, it is often better to think of shapes as shapes, because that makes
use of our powerful and intuitive visual capabilities, whereas complicated lists of numbers
are best reserved for our weaker and more laborious symbolic abilities. All of the common
shapes can be found in nature, although some are far more common, or more evident,
than others. The rainbow, for example, is a collection of circles, one for each color. We
don't normally see the entire circle, just an arc; but rainbows seen from the air can be
complete circles. You also see circles in the ripples on a pond, in the human eye, and on
butterflies' wings. There are also wave patterns on land. The most strikingly mathematical
landscapes on Earth are to be found in the great ergs, or sand oceans, of the Arabian
and Sahara deserts.

Nature's love of stripes and spots extends into the animal kingdom, with tigers and
leopards, zebras and giraffes. The shapes and patterns of animals and plants are a happy
hunting ground for the mathematically minded. In addition to patterns of form, there are
patterns of movement. In the human walk, the feet strike the ground in a regular rhythm:
left and right. When a four-legged creature-a horse, say-walks, there is a more complex
but equally rhythmic pattern. This prevalence of pattern in locomotion extends to the
scuttling of insects, the flight of birds, the pulsations of jellyfish, and the wavelike
movements of fish, worms, and snakes. A desert snake, moves rather like a single coil of
a helical spring, thrusting its body forward in a series of S-shaped curves, in an attempt
to minimize its contact with the hot sand.

Finally, there is another category of natural pattern-one that has captured human
imagination only very recently, but dramatically. Our nature has many secrets whether it
is regular or not. But in the end, we were all fascinated on how amazing our nature
patterns was. But this type of studies and exploration is giving us a deeper vision of the
universe in which we live, and of our own place in it.

Page 4 of 5
REFERENCE

Stewart I. (1995) Nature’s Number, HarperCollins Publisher, Inc, New York, United States
of America

Dossey J. (1992) The Nature of Mathematics: Its role and its influence, Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243769794_The_nature_of_mathematics_Its_
role_and_its_influence

Schroder B. (2002) Order sets, Retrieved from:

https://www.math.usm.edu/schroeder/books/schroeder,%20ordered%20sets,%20first%
20chapter.pdf

Chunse, N. and Siripitukdet, M. (2010) The Natural Partial Order on Regular Γ-

Semigroups, Retrieved from:
http://emis.impa.br/EMIS/journals/BMMSS/pdf/acceptedpapers/2013-04-059-R1.pdf

CRUZ, GWYNETH WELCH S.

19-07567

gwynethwelch.cruz@g.batstate-u.edu.ph

Page 5 of 5