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Overview
— Publishers Weekly
Embracing nature and culture, this book seeks out the grand-scale patterns that help explain the functioning of our universe. Beginning with the archetypal patterns of space, Volk turns to the arrows, breaks and cycles that infuse the workings of time. Illustrating his metapatterns with a series of collages, Volk offers an exciting new look at science and the imagination.
Synopsis
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.
Publishers Weekly
Metapatterns, as defined by Volk, who teaches earth system science at New York University, are universal patterns that recur in nature, organisms, ecosystems, art, politics and society. In this open-ended, synthesizing inquiry in the tradition of R. Buckminster Fuller, Volk identifies 10 such archetypal patterns: spheres, borders, sheets and tubes, binaries, centers, layers, calendars, arrows, breaks, cycles. Spheres includes human embryos, stars, atoms, freshwater algae colonies, the cosmic egg of Greek and Neolithic myths; arrows manifest in acceleration, time, learning, individuation, evolution, the nuclear arms race; cycles encompass lunar movement, menstruation, the Buddhist Great Wheel, Earth's biogeochemical interactions, time patterns in Beethoven symphonies. Although the interconnections among these and other phenomena often appear arbitrary or tangential, Volk gives us new ways of thinking about and looking at the world. Intriguingly illustrated with computer and hand drawings, collages and photographs, his lyrical meditation will appeal to scientists, New Age types, interdisciplinary thinkers and the intellectually adventurous. BOMC and Natural Science Book Club selections. (June)