Theophrastus (c. 372–c. 287 BC) noted that plants "that have flat leaves have them in a regular series"; Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) noted their patterned circular arrangement. Centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) noted the spiral arrangement of leaf patterns, that tree trunks gain successive rings as they age, and proposed a rule purportedly satisfied by the cross-sectional areas of tree-branches. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) pointed out the presence of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, using it to explain the pentagonal form of some flowers. In 1754, Charles Bonnet observed that the spiral phyllotaxis of plants were frequently expressed in both clockwise and counter-clockwise golden ratio series.
History
Patterns in nature
Patterns in nature | History
Leonardo da Vinci Early Greek philosophers studied pattern, with Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles attempting to explain order in nature. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Theophrastus etc Pythagoras, Empedocles to  A. H. Church, and D'Arcy Thompson.
what does patterns in nature refer to?
user
They are visible regularities of form found in the natural world.
assistant
what patterns does it include?
user
It includes symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes.
assistant
what is it caused by?
user
Causes can be in the mathematics that governs what patterns can physically form, and among living things in the effects of natural selection, that govern how patterns evolve.
assistant
were these indicated in any books?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
can you name anyone from history who has done such researches on this?
user
In 1202, Leonardo Fibonacci introduced the Fibonacci sequence to the western world with his book "Liber Abaci". Fibonacci presented a thought experiment on the growth of an idealized rabbit population.
Patterns in nature | History
Early Greek philosophers attempted to explain order in nature, anticipating modern concepts. Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC) explained patterns in nature like the harmonies of music as arising from number, which he took to be the basic constituent of existence. Empedocles (c. 494–c. 434 BC) to an extent anticipated Darwin's evolutionary explanation for the structures of organisms. Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BC) argued for the existence of natural universals. He considered these to consist of ideal forms ( "eidos": "form") of which physical objects are never more than imperfect copies. Thus, a flower may be roughly circular, but it is never a perfect circle.
Patterns in nature | History
Theophrastus (c. 372–c. 287 BC) noted that plants "that have flat leaves have them in a regular series"; Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) noted their patterned circular arrangement. Centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) noted the spiral arrangement of leaf patterns, that tree trunks gain successive rings as they age, and proposed a rule purportedly satisfied by the cross-sectional areas of tree-branches. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) pointed out the presence of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, using it to explain the pentagonal form of some flowers. In 1754, Charles Bonnet observed that the spiral phyllotaxis of plants were frequently expressed in both clockwise and counter-clockwise golden ratio series.
Patterns in nature | History
Pioneering authors General books Patterns from nature (as art)
Patterns in nature | Bibliography
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. In the 19th century, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau examined soap films, leading him to formulate the concept of a minimal surface. The German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel painted hundreds of marine organisms to emphasise their symmetry.
Patterns in nature | Introduction
Natural patterns are sometimes formed by animals, as in the Mima mounds of the Northwestern United States and some other areas, which appear to be created over many years by the burrowing activities of pocket gophers, while the so-called fairy circles of Namibia appear to be created by the interaction of competing groups of sand termites, along with competition for water among the desert plants.
Patterns in nature | Pattern formation
Scottish biologist D'Arcy Thompson pioneered the study of growth patterns in both plants and animals, showing that simple equations could explain spiral growth. In the 20th century, the British mathematician Alan Turing predicted mechanisms of morphogenesis which give rise to patterns of spots and stripes. The Hungarian biologist Aristid Lindenmayer and the French American mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot showed how the mathematics of fractals could create plant growth patterns. 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.
Patterns in nature | Introduction
Mathematical observations of phyllotaxis followed with Karl Friedrich Schimper and his friend Alexander Braun's 1830 and 1830 work, respectively; Auguste Bravais and his brother Louis connected phyllotaxis ratios to the Fibonacci sequence in 1837, also noting its appearance in pinecones and pineapples. In his 1854 book, German psychologist Adolf Zeising explored the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of plant parts, the skeletons of animals and the branching patterns of their veins and nerves, as well as in crystals. A. H. Church studied the patterns of phyllotaxis in his 1904 book. In 1917, D'Arcy Thompson published "On Growth and Form"; his description of phyllotaxis and the Fibonacci sequence, the mathematical relationships in the spiral growth patterns of plants showed that simple equations could describe the spiral growth patterns of animal horns and mollusc shells.
Patterns in nature | History
Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns () is a 1970 book by the ethnologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. "Love and Hate" was reviewed in "Current Anthropology".
Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns | Introduction
Ramsey's next argumentative manoeuvre is to point out that traits are not randomly scattered across potential life histories; there are patterns. “These patterns” he states “provide the basis for the notion of individual and human nature”. While one's ‘individual nature’ consists of the pattern of trait clusters distributed across that individual's set of possible life histories, Human Nature, Ramsey defines as “the pattern of trait clusters within the totality of extant human possible life histories”. Thus, if we were to combine all possible life histories of all individuals in existence we would have access to the trait distribution patterns that constitute human nature.
Human nature | "Life-history trait cluster" account (Ramsey)
The young leopards and ladybirds, inheriting genes that somehow create spottedness, survive. But while these evolutionary and functional arguments explain why these animals need their patterns, they do not explain how the patterns are formed.
Patterns in nature | Spots, stripes
Alan Turing, and later the mathematical biologist James Murray, described a mechanism that spontaneously creates spotted or striped patterns: a reaction–diffusion system. The cells of a young organism have genes that can be switched on by a chemical signal, a morphogen, resulting in the growth of a certain type of structure, say a darkly pigmented patch of skin. If the morphogen is present everywhere, the result is an even pigmentation, as in a black leopard. But if it is unevenly distributed, spots or stripes can result. Turing suggested that there could be feedback control of the production of the morphogen itself.
Patterns in nature | Pattern formation
Referring to Ruth Benedict, Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, the patterns of human behaviour were called “configurations” (→Configurational analysis (Konfigurationsanalyse)).
Historical behaviour studies | Institute of Social Research – the Stuttgart school
Even a lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature of that particular book.
History of books | Introduction
His "The naturalist's pocket-book, or Tourist's companion : being a brief introduction to the different branches of natural history : with approved methods for collecting and preserving the various productions of nature" was published in London, printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown in 1818. Written in the tradition of Francis Bacon, it expressed the belief that natural history was about the exploration of nature's bounty for the benefits it could bring to humans: The book included sample pages showing the layout which Graves used in his own field notebook, with columns for recording important facts about these points as each item was observed.
George Graves (biologist) | The naturalist's pocket-book
Fire history, the ecological science of the study of the history of wildfires, is a subdiscipline of fire ecology. Patterns of forest fires in historical and prehistorical time provide information relevant to the pattern of vegetation in modern landscapes. It provides an estimate of the historical range of variability of a natural disturbance regime, and can be used to identify the processes affecting the occurrence of fire. Fire history reconstructions are achieved by compiling atlases of past fires, using the tree ring record from fire scars and tree ages, and the charcoal record from soils and sediments.
Fire history | Introduction
Nature provides examples of many kinds of pattern, including symmetries, trees and other structures with a fractal dimension, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tilings, cracks and stripes.
Pattern | Nature
Breintnall worked with Franklin to verify the results of an experiment designed to ascertain the relationship between color and energy absorption from the sun.
Joseph Breintnall | Nature Printing and Other Contributions to the Study of Natural History
Also important in his choice was that there was a small number of blocks, that also combined in particular ways.
Pattern Blocks | History
In his 1964 book, "Patterns in the Balance of Nature", Williams gave a still valuable overview of this discipline. With Fisher, Williams was able to establish patterns in the diversity and numbers of insects caught in light traps. He noticed that logarithmic patterns were widespread, an idea which was later developed by other ecologists like Frank W. Preston. Williams used this pattern to predict the number of head lice on people using data on counts of lice from prisoners in a South Indian jail. Williams calculated that the number of persons with only one louse must be 107 and the actual was 106 and he wrote "so Nature was only one wrong".
C.B. Williams | Statistical ecology
Living things like orchids, hummingbirds, and the peacock's tail have abstract designs with a beauty of form, pattern and colour that artists struggle to match. The beauty that people perceive in nature has causes at different levels, notably in the mathematics that governs what patterns can physically form, and among living things in the effects of natural selection, that govern how patterns evolve. 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.
Patterns in nature | Causes
Watts' books frequently include discussions reflecting his keen interest in patterns that occur in nature and which are repeated in various ways and at a wide range of scales – including the patterns to be discerned in the history of civilizations.
Alan Watts | Worldview
Pliny repeated Aristotle's maxim that Africa was always producing something new. Nature's variety and versatility were claimed to be infinite: "When I have observed nature she has always induced me to deem no statement about her incredible." This led Pliny to recount rumours of strange peoples on the edges of the world. These monstrous races – the Cynocephali or Dog-Heads, the Sciapodae, whose single foot could act as a sunshade, the mouthless Astomi, who lived on scents – were not strictly new. They had been mentioned in the fifth century BC by Greek historian Herodotus (whose history was a broad mixture of myths, legends, and facts), but Pliny made them better known.
Natural History (Pliny) | Overview
More puzzling is the reason for the fivefold (pentaradiate) symmetry of the echinoderms. Early echinoderms were bilaterally symmetrical, as their larvae still are. Sumrall and Wray argue that the loss of the old symmetry had both developmental and ecological causes.
Patterns in nature | Symmetry
As of March 2012, the book was in its 40th printing.
Design Patterns | History
Alan Turing, and later the mathematical biologist James D. Murray and other scientists, described a mechanism that spontaneously creates spotted or striped patterns, for example in the skin of mammals or the plumage of birds: a reaction–diffusion system involving two counter-acting chemical mechanisms, one that activates and one that inhibits a development, such as of dark pigment in the skin. These spatiotemporal patterns slowly drift, the animals' appearance changing imperceptibly as Turing predicted.
Pattern | Spots, stripes
He also published on sericulture in Oudh. He was also interested in other aspects of natural history and wrote a book on evolution which examined such aspects as the evolution of spots and stripes in wild cats and the origins of other animal skin patterning. He speculated that these patterns were derived from armoured ancestors such as glyptodonts with the ancestral rosette as seen in the leopard consolidated into spots in cheetahs, blotches, and stripes in other cats. In his "Contributions to Christology" (1869) he attempted to identify rational explanations for miracles involving animals. He corresponded with Charles Darwin, and naturalists in India such as Allan Octavian Hume to whom he sent bird specimens.
Emanuel Bonavia | Life and work
Trait patterns, on Ramsey's account, can be captured in the form of conditional statements, such as "if female, you develop ovaries" or "if male, you develop testes." These statements will not be true of all humans. Ramsey contends that these statements capture part of human nature if they have a good balance of "pervasiveness" (many people satisfy the antecedent of the conditional statement), and "robustness" (many people who satisfy the antecedent go on to satisfy the consequent).
Human nature | "Life-history trait cluster" account (Ramsey)
The English naturalists Gilbert White and William Markwick reported the seasonal events of more than 400 plant and animal species, Gilbert White in Selborne, Hampshire and William Markwick in Battle, Sussex over a 25-year period between 1768 and 1793. The data, reported in White's "Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne" are reported as the earliest and latest dates for each event over 25 years; so annual changes cannot therefore be determined.
Phenology | Historical
While there, he observed that almost all of the species in the park occupied large geographic ranges, and despite the heterogeneity of habitats across these ranges, individuals were mostly identical across locations, indicating that little local adaptation had taken place. He described the cyclical life history pattern he believed responsible for this pattern: a species begins as a small population occupying a small area with little genetic variation, but then over the course of a few generations grows to occupy a large area, either because of the emergence of a genotype successful over a wider range, or because of the removal of a geographic barrier.
Ecological fitting | Origin
Whereas scholars and theologians once held a symbolist mentality of the natural world as expressive of spiritual realities, intellectual thinking now regarded nature as a “coherent entity which could be systematically investigated by the senses. The idea of nature is that of a particular ordering of natural objects, and the study of nature the systematic investigation of that order.” The notion of order in nature implied a structure to the physical world whereby relationships between objects could be defined. According to Harrison, the twelfth century marked an important time in the Christian era when the world became invested with its own patterns of order—patterns based on networks of likeness or similarities among material things, which served to determine the character of a pre-modern knowledge of nature.
Book of Nature | Rediscovering the natural world
— Many of these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms & rich colours. — It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose."
Plankton net | History
Bigend and Cayce's view of history are compared to those of philosopher Benedetto Croce in that they believe history is open for interpretation when re-written from the frame of reference of another society. Parkaboy rejects this view, believing that history can be an exact science.
Pattern Recognition (novel) | Memory of history
Ramsey underlines the patterns behind these possible routes by delving into the causes of these life histories. For example, one can make the following claim: “Humans sweat when they get exhausted" or one can also propose neurological claims such as “Humans secrete Adrenaline when they are in flight-fight mode.” This approach enables Ramsey to go beyond the superficial appearances and understand the similarities/differences between individuals in a deeper level which refers to the causal mechanisms (processes, structures and constraints etc.) which lie beneath them. Once we list all the possible life-histories of an individual, we can find these causal patterns and add them together to form the basis of individual nature.
Human nature | "Life-history trait cluster" account (Ramsey)
Kuhn claimed that far from merely building on the previous theory's accomplishments, each new paradigm essentially throws out the old way of looking at the universe, and comes up with its own vocabulary to describe it and its own guidelines for expanding knowledge within the new paradigm.
Sociology of the history of science | Patterns in the history of science
While the idea of making inked impressions of leaves was a popular "craft" activity of middle-class women at the time, Breintnall is credited with applying the practice in a scientific setting. Breintnall then shipped these highly detailed prints to English naturalists like Peter Collinson. Later, Franklin and Breintnall worked to take plaster casts of various plant leaves in order to produce copper plates of the specimens. Franklin returned to the technique in 1737 in an effort to thwart counterfeiters of paper money bills. These early Nature prints were sent to English naturalists who were increasingly curious about American plant biology.
Joseph Breintnall | Nature Printing and Other Contributions to the Study of Natural History
Greig-Smith was fascinated by the phenomenon of plant spatial pattern, defined by the question: why are some plants regularly spaced while others are densely clumped? He realized that plants could be clumped at a certain scale, but that those clumps, in turn, could be randomly, or even regularly distributed at larger scales. Patterns and processes in ecology, he concluded, can have different behaviors at different scale. Strongly influenced by his early experience in agricultural experiments using random blocks and nested designs, he sought to answer this question by using, as his core tool, a series of quadrats nested within each other at different scales.
Peter Greig-Smith | Pattern and Scaling in Ecological Sciences
Subscribers received and paid for fascicles, small sections of the books, as they came out, so that the cash flow was constant and could be reinvested in the preparation of subsequent parts. As book orders arrived, the monochrome lithographs were hand-coloured, according to colour reference images, known as 'pattern plates', which were produced by Swainson himself. It was his early adoption of this new technology and his natural skill of illustration that in large part led to his fame. When in March 1822 Leach was forced to resign from the British Museum due to ill health, Swainson applied to replace him, but the post was given to John George Children.
William John Swainson | Works on natural history
One explanation is that this allows trees to better withstand high winds. Simulations of biomechanical models agree with the rule.
Patterns in nature | Trees, fractals
A period of intense nature studies followed these works, though he did not formulate them as naturalistic reproductions but instead took them in an abstract direction. With scientific precision, he examined plant structures in particular, dissecting organic material and making cross sections in natural tissue in order to study the essence of things and figure out the basic nature of form. Giuffrida understood the minutiae at the heart of the elements he analysed as fundamental forms of nature, which are combined in natural creation in myriad, endlessly varied formations. He reduces these basic shapes to geometric patterns which he captures in small square pictures in equally diverse variations.
Alfio Giuffrida | Biography
Thompson kept his notes for "The Natural History of Ireland" in envelopes. These contained notes made at various times, letters, or extracts from letters, references to his personal journals or to his published papers, to books, to scientific periodicals, or to the transactions of societies (many foreign). Small envelopes contained notes on species. These were placed in larger envelopes for genera (also containing notes on genera). In turn these were placed in envelopes for families (containing notes on families). The families, genera, and species were arranged in regular sequence so that any particular one could immediately be found. The notes were written on paper "of the most miscellaneous description ; and occasionally on scraps so small that six or eight lines were crowded into a slip not exceeding an inch in breadth".
The Natural History of Ireland | Method
Apart from this nonlinearity, barchans behave rather like solitary waves.
Patterns in nature | Waves, dunes
History of natural science
Outline of natural science | History of natural science
... I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual—of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities" and this more recent definition by D.S. Wilcove and T. Eisner: "The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior, and their relationships with other species". This focus on organisms in their environment is also echoed by H.W. Greene and J.B. Losos: "Natural history focuses on where organisms are and what they do in their environment, including interactions with other organisms.
Natural history | Since 1900
Markwick provided the natural history illustrations for some of his works, both zoological and botanical.
William Markwick | Illustrations
On his return home he would again give to study any time that he had free. Often in summer after taking a meal, which with him, as in the old days, was always a simple and light one, he would lie in the sun if he had any time to spare, and a book would be read aloud, from which he would take notes and extracts. Pliny the Younger told the following anecdote illustrating his uncle's enthusiasm for study: After dinner a book would be read aloud, and he would take notes in a cursory way. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader pronounced a word wrongly, checked him and made him read it again, and my uncle said to him, "Did you not catch the meaning?" When his friend said "yes," he remarked, "Why then did you make him turn back? We have lost more than ten lines through your interruption." So jealous was he of every moment lost.
Natural History (Pliny) | Working method
His writing was sometimes slapdash, but always vivid and racy, and made natural history attractive to the mass readership. This is an example:
Francis Trevelyan Buckland | Natural history and zoöphagy
The text contains some claims that appear to be errors. Aristotle asserted that the females of any species have a smaller number of teeth than the males. This apparently readily falsifiable claim could have been a genuine observation, if as Robert Mayhew suggests women at that time had a poorer diet than men; but the claim is not true of other species either. Thus, Philippa Lang argues, Aristotle may have been empirical, but he was quite laissez-faire about observation, "because [he] was not expecting nature to be misleading". In other cases, errors may have been wrongly attributed to Aristotle. Katrin Weigmann wrote "[Aristotle's] statement that flies have four legs was repeated in natural history texts for more than a thousand years despite the fact that a little counting would have proven otherwise." However, the historian and philosopher of biology John S.
History of Animals | Apparent errors
Phytogeography has a long history. One of the subjects earliest proponents was Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who is often referred to as the "father of phytogeography". Von Humboldt advocated a quantitative approach to phytogeography that has characterized modern plant geography. Gross patterns of the distribution of plants became apparent early on in the study of plant geography. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, discussed the Latitudinal gradients in species diversity, a pattern observed in other organisms as well. Much research effort in plant geography has since then been devoted to understanding this pattern and describing it in more detail.
Phytogeography | History
Natural history Human history Encyclopedias
Don Rittner | Books (partial list)
Later researchers found that his very difficult process did in fact have a limited ability to reproduce the colors of nature.
Levi Hill | Introduction
His recent works continue this way of thinking and includes "Rift Patterns" (2014) released as an iBook complete with a short story by Deborah Templeton, photographs by Stephen Harvey, and videos by Jason Payne.
Monty Adkins | History
Other papers such as "The collection of natural history specimens" (Ibid, 1903, Vol. 4, pp. 33–37) and "Notes on the habits of a young genet" (Ibid, 1907, Vol. 7, pp. 25–28) reflected his deep interest in natural history.
Frederick Eyles | Introduction
Grant Ramsey proposes an alternative account of human nature, which he names the "life-history trait cluster" account. This view stems from the recognition that the combination of a specific genetic constitution with a specific environment is not sufficient to determine how a life will go, i.e., whether one is rich, poor, dies old, dies young, etc. Many ‘life histories’ are possible for a given individual, each populated by a great number of traits. Ramsey defines his conception of human nature in reference to the “pattern of trait clusters within the totality of extant possible life-histories”. In other words, there are certain life histories, i.e., possible routes one's life can take, for example: being rich, being a PhD student, or getting ill.
Human nature | "Life-history trait cluster" account (Ramsey)
Natural history in India was also enriched by older traditions of conservation, folklore, nature study and the arts.
Indian natural history | Introduction
Since each species of tree has its own structure at the levels of cell and of molecules, each has its own pattern of splitting in its bark.
Patterns in nature | Cracks
The tradition of clerical naturalists may be traced back to some monastic writings of the Middle Ages, although some argue that their writings about animals and plants cannot be correctly classified as natural history. Notable early parson-naturalists were William Turner (1508–1568), John Ray (1627–1705), William Derham (1657–1735), and Gilbert White (1720–1793).
Parson-naturalist | Early history
The branching pattern of trees was described in the Italian Renaissance by Leonardo da Vinci. He stated that: All the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk [below them]. A more general version states that when a parent branch splits into two or more child branches, the surface areas of the child branches add up to that of the parent branch. An equivalent formulation is that if a parent branch splits into two child branches, then the cross-sectional diameters of the parent and the two child branches form a right-angled triangle.
Patterns in nature | Trees, fractals
Unknown to them, the same pattern had been observed many years earlier, by François Proth, but it is by Gilbreath's name that the conjecture is now known.
Norman Laurence Gilbreath | Life and career
Natural history begins with Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who analyzed the diversity of the natural world. Natural history was understood by Pliny the Elder to cover anything that could be found in the world, including living things, geology, astronomy, technology, art, and humanity. "De Materia Medica" was written between 50 and 70 AD by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Roman physician of Greek origin. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted in the Renaissance, making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history books. From the ancient Greeks until the work of Carl Linnaeus and other 18th-century naturalists, a major concept of natural history was the "scala naturae" or Great Chain of Being, an arrangement of minerals, vegetables, more primitive forms of animals, and more complex life forms on a linear scale of supposedly increasing perfection, culminating in our species.
Natural history | Ancient times
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian. Natural history encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it. It involves the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. So while it dates from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the mediaeval Arabic world, through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's natural history is a cross-discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences; e.g., geobiology has a strong multidisciplinary nature.
Natural history | Introduction
Some of the earliest ideas and mathematical descriptions on how physical processes and constraints affect biological growth, and hence natural patterns such as the spirals of phyllotaxis, were written by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson in his 1917 book "On Growth and Form" and Alan Turing in his "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (1952). Where Thompson explained animal body shapes as being created by varying rates of growth in different directions, for instance to create the spiral shell of a snail, Turing correctly predicted a mechanism of morphogenesis, the diffusion of two different chemical signals, one activating and one deactivating growth, to set up patterns of development, decades before the formation of such patterns was observed.
Morphogenesis | History
This exemplifies the selection of artistic individuals, since fitness is concomitant with participation in leisure activity. Gillian Morriss-Kay addressed preliminary artistic patters like zig-zag, criss-cross, and parallel lines. Use of patterns indicate advancements in cognition and signify an evolutionary step towards increasing complexity in imaginative capability. Early interpretations of the human form, as seen in the Venus Figurines and the Lion-Man reflect this evolutionary step by indicating awareness of anatomy and the function of symbolism.
Anthropology of art | History
He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source of his late writings on natural history, such as "Autumnal Tints", "The Succession of Trees", and "Wild Apples", an essay lamenting the destruction of indigenous wild apple species. With the rise of environmental history and ecocriticism as academic disciplines, several new readings of Thoreau began to emerge, showing him to have been both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots. For instance, "The Succession of Forest Trees", shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through the dispersal of seeds by winds or animals.
Henry David Thoreau | Later years, 1851–1862
No research into the sleeping patterns in natural environments of primates closely related to humans was cited for comparison.
Thomas Wehr | Biography
Patterns of Civilization is a history textbook by Burton F. Beers. It explores the history of European nations as well as their effect on North America and Asia. It was published in 1984; volume 1 contains 216 pages and volume 2, which is used as a grade 9 textbook, contains 210 pages.
Patterns of Civilization | Introduction
Together they sent nature prints which were printed directly from inked leaves to English naturalists. In the year of Breintnall's death, his wife, Esther Parker, donated two volumes of leaf prints compiled by her husband to the Library Company. In 1737 Breintnall wrote an article about "Rattlesnake Herb"' for Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" Franklin sold around 10,000 copies of this "Almanack". Printed near the article is an image of a leaf. The image differs from the earlier prints and was made by a metal casting, rather than an inked specimen. According to the text, the image is of a kind of goldenrod.
Joseph Breintnall | Nature Printing and Other Contributions to the Study of Natural History
In 1743 Edwards published the first volume of his "A Natural History of Uncommon Birds", the fourth volume of which appeared in 1751; three supplementary volumes, under the title "Gleanings of Natural History", were issued in 1758, 1760 and 1764. The two works contain engravings and descriptions of more than 600 subjects in natural history not before described or delineated. He likewise added a general index in French and English, which was afterwards supplied with Linnaean names by Linnaeus himself, with whom he frequently corresponded. About 1764 he retired to Plaistow, Essex, still a rural village, where he later died at the age of 77.
George Edwards (naturalist) | Ornithology
These are of special interest for natural history.
Prokletije | Flora
The woodland pattern is nearly identical to highland ERDL, only differing in that it is printed from an enlargement of the original. The woodland pattern was enlarged and the borders of the splotches were re-drawn to make them less regular. Part of the earlier pattern was left off the later pattern because the enlargement made them no longer fit on the width of the bolt of cloth. The pattern does not repeat horizontally across the width of the bolt, but only vertically along its length. The effect of enlarging the pattern was to make the pattern more visible at a distance, avoiding "blobbing", where smaller areas of color seem to blend into larger blobs.
U.S. Woodland | Development and history
Modern definitions of natural history come from a variety of fields and sources, and many of the modern definitions emphasize a particular aspect of the field, creating a plurality of definitions with a number of common themes among them. For example, while natural history is most often defined as a type of observation and a subject of study, it can also be defined as a body of knowledge, and as a craft or a practice, in which the emphasis is placed more on the observer than on the observed. Definitions from biologists often focus on the scientific study of individual organisms in their environment, as seen in this definition by Marston Bates: "Natural history is the study of animals and Plants—of organisms.
Natural history | Since 1900
A significant contribution to English natural history was made by parson-naturalists such as Gilbert White, William Kirby, John George Wood, and John Ray, who wrote about plants, animals, and other aspects of nature. Many of these men wrote about nature to make the natural theology argument for the existence or goodness of God. Since early modern times, however, a great number of women made contributions to natural history, particularly in the field of botany, be it as authors, collectors, or illustrators. In modern Europe, professional disciplines such as botany, geology, mycology, palaeontology, physiology, and zoology were formed. "Natural history", formerly the main subject taught by college science professors, was increasingly scorned by scientists of a more specialized manner and relegated to an "amateur" activity, rather than a part of science proper.
Natural history | Birth of scientific biology
The history of ornithology largely reflects the trends in the history of biology, as well as many other scientific disciplines, including ecology, anatomy, physiology, paleontology, and more recently, molecular biology. Trends include the move from mere descriptions to the identification of patterns, thus towards elucidating the processes that produce these patterns.
Ornithology | History
In the U.S., Alexander Catlin Twining (1801–1884) suggested in 1833 that patterns among tree rings could be used to synchronize the dendrochronologies of various trees and thereby to reconstruct past climates across entire regions. The English polymath Charles Babbage proposed using dendrochronology to date the remains of trees in peat bogs or even in geological strata (1835, 1838). During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the scientific study of tree rings and the application of dendrochronology began. In 1859, the German-American Jacob Kuechler (1823–1893) used crossdating to examine oaks ("Quercus stellata") in order to study the record of climate in western Texas.
Dendrochronology | History
Others geographers arranged it differently.
Dascylium | History
In 1684, Plot published "De origine fontium", a treatise on the source of springs, which he attributed to underground channels originating from the sea. Plot shifted his focus towards archaeology in the 1686 publication of his second book, "The Natural History of Staffordshire", but misinterpreted Roman remains as Saxon. He also describes a double sunset viewable from Leek, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. and, for the first time, the Polish swan, a pale morph of the mute swan.
Robert Plot | Natural history and chemistry
Natural history is the scientific study of plants or animals. Natural History may also refer to: In science and medicine:
Natural history (disambiguation) | Introduction
Other herbaria hold specimens he collected (e.g. the Fielding-Druce Herbarium (OXF)).
James Eustace Bagnall | Contributions to Natural History
Chapman to quantify long-term patterns. This data became invaluable when globally researchers became aware of climate change and the fact that old growth forests were much more dynamic than previously believed.
Colin Chapman (primatologist) | Research
Widespread travel by naturalists in the early-to-mid-19th century resulted in a wealth of new information about the diversity and distribution of living organisms. Of particular importance was the work of Alexander von Humboldt, which analyzed the relationship between organisms and their environment (i.e., the domain of natural history) using the quantitative approaches of natural philosophy (i.e., physics and chemistry). Humboldt's work laid the foundations of biogeography and inspired several generations of scientists.
History of biology | Natural history and natural philosophy
While some sources state that Benjamin Franklin invented Nature printing as a way of deterring counterfeiters from copying the currency he was contracted to print, it is more accurate to say that Franklin applied the results of Joseph Breintnall's early attempts to render, in scientific detail, the diversity of American botanical life. Breintnall worked with the botanist John Bartram in the early 1730s to collect samples of plants in and around the city of Philadelphia. Rather than flattening and drying leaves in order to preserve individual specimens, Breintnall experimented with making prints of fresh leaves by inking the specimens and placing them between sheets of folded paper before running through a press.
Joseph Breintnall | Nature Printing and Other Contributions to the Study of Natural History
The second is a calendar, organized by phenological event around the year. The third is a collection of observations, organised by animal or plant group and species, with a section on meteorology. The apparently rambling structure of the book is in fact bracketed by opening and closing sections, arranged like the rest as letters, which "give form and scale and even a semblance of narrative structure to what would otherwise have been a shapeless anthology."
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne | Overview
The book was published by Ackermann of London by subscription, a common practice at the time, and sold for 5 guineas as single volume; it was also obtainable in 10 monthly parts issued between 1818 and 1820. One subscriber was Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King George III. Of the roughly 100 copies that were subscribed for, only a small handful are known to have survived. "Studies of Flowers from Nature" is valued today for the exceptionally high quality of the flower paintings.
Studies of Flowers from Nature | Publication history
By this time, Plot had already developed an interest in the systematic study of natural history and antiquities. In June 1674, with patronage from John Fell, the bishop of Oxford, and Ralph Bathurst, vice-chancellor of the university, Plot began studying and collecting artefacts throughout the nearby countryside, publishing his findings three years later in "The Natural History of Oxford-shire". In this work, he described and illustrated various rocks, minerals and fossils, including the first known illustration of a dinosaur bone which he attributed to a giant (later recognised as the femur of a "Megalosaurus"), but believed that most fossils were not remains of living organisms but rather crystallisations of mineral salts with a coincidental zoological form.
Robert Plot | Natural history and chemistry
Karl Popper independently describes these objects in his "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (1934), calling them "shortest random-like sequences".
De Bruijn sequence | History
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, or just The Natural History of Selborne is a book by English parson-naturalist Gilbert White (1720-1793). It was first published in 1789 by his brother Benjamin. It has been continuously in print since then, with nearly 300 editions up to 2007. The book was published late in White's life, compiled from a mixture of his letters to other naturalists—Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington; a 'Naturalist's Calendar' (in the second edition) comparing phenology observations made by White and William Markwick of the first appearances in the year of different animals and plants; and observations of natural history organized more or less systematically by species and group.
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne | Introduction
There are no stories of animal intelligence and cunning on record, that I am aware of, that match his.
Nature fakers controversy | "Real and Sham Natural History"
Gregory Bateson coined the term metapattern. He notably defined this term in the introduction to his 1979 book "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity." "My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect."
Metapattern | Gregory Bateson
"Nature" published an online article written in 2012 about the various reactions on the subject.
Genoeconomics | History
The Society's first President was Charles Davies Sherborn (1861–1942), who compiled the "Index Animalium" single-handedly over 43 years (1758–1850). This 11 volume, 9,000 page work became the basis for zoological nomenclature. The Society's main publication is "Archives of Natural History" which is published for the Society by Edinburgh University Press. "Archives of Natural History" provides an avenue for the publication of papers on the history and bibliography of natural history in its broadest sense, and in all periods and all cultures. This includes botany, geology, palaeontology and zoology, the lives of naturalists, their publications, correspondence and collections, and the institutions and societies to which they belong.
Society for the History of Natural History | Introduction
Letters to Barrington from the parson-naturalist Gilbert White form a large part of White's 1789 book "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne"; Barrington's half of the correspondence is not included. Barrington established the format of the "Naturalist's Journal" for "keeping a daily register of observations on the weather, plants, birds, insects, &c" based on Benjamin Stillingfleet for collating information from across England. This format printed by Gilbert White's brother Benjamin was used from around 1769 to serve the study of the natural history of Selbourne. Very few of his log books are extant but Barrington has been considered as a pioneer of the study of phenology.
Daines Barrington | Antiquarian and scientific writings
Opportunities are still wanting to confirm the most interesting of its habits." *
The Natural History of Ireland | Style
Tessellations are patterns formed by repeating tiles all over a flat surface. There are 17 wallpaper groups of tilings. While common in art and design, exactly repeating tilings are less easy to find in living things. The cells in the paper nests of social wasps, and the wax cells in honeycomb built by honey bees are well-known examples. Among animals, bony fish, reptiles or the pangolin, or fruits like the salak are protected by overlapping scales or osteoderms, these form more-or-less exactly repeating units, though often the scales in fact vary continuously in size. Among flowers, the snake's head fritillary, "Fritillaria meleagris", have a tessellated chequerboard pattern on their petals.
Patterns in nature | Tessellations
Pliny the Elder, in his book "Natural History" writes:
Skopelos | History
The 1715 and 1732 reports, when coupled with his own 1749 and 1750 observations, supported the previous "general opinion" that he had cited. Kalm summarized his findings in a paper translated into English in 1771, stating:There are a kind of "Locusts" which about every seventeen years come hither in incredible numbers ... In the interval between the years when they are so numerous, they are only seen or heard single in the woods.
Magicicada septendecim | Historical Accounts of Periodicity
Pliny claims to be the only Roman ever to have undertaken such a work, in his prayer for the blessing of the universal mother: Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favour unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department, thus made known thy praise. The "Natural History" is encyclopaedic in scope, but its format is unlike a modern encyclopaedia. However, it does have structure: Pliny uses Aristotle's division of nature (animal, vegetable, mineral) to recreate the natural world in literary form. Rather than presenting compartmentalised, stand-alone entries arranged alphabetically, Pliny's ordered natural landscape is a coherent whole, offering the reader a guided tour: "a brief excursion under our direction among the whole of the works of nature ..." The work is unified but varied: "My subject is the world of nature ...
Natural History (Pliny) | Overview
Fossil evidence of pre-Cambrian life has since been found, extending the history of life back for billions of years. Chapter X examines whether patterns in the fossil record are better explained by common descent and branching evolution through natural selection, than by the individual creation of fixed species. Darwin expected species to change slowly, but not at the same rate – some organisms such as "Lingula" were unchanged since the earliest fossils. The pace of natural selection would depend on variability and change in the environment. This distanced his theory from Lamarckian laws of inevitable progress. It has been argued that this anticipated the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, but other scholars have preferred to emphasise Darwin's commitment to gradualism.
On the Origin of Species | Geological record
The English mathematician Alan Turing introduced a concept, which came to be known as a Turing pattern, in a 1952 paper entitled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis". This foundational paper describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spots, can arise naturally and autonomously from a homogeneous, uniform state. In his classic paper, Turing examined the behaviour of a system in which two diffusible substances interact with each other, and found that such a system is able to generate a spatially periodic pattern even from a random or almost uniform initial condition. Turing hypothesized that the resulting wavelike patterns are the chemical basis of morphogenesis.
Turing pattern | Introduction
Landscape genetics emerged as its own discipline after the seminal article entitled "Landscape genetics: combining landscape ecology and population genetics" by Manel et al. appeared in the journal "Trends in Ecology and Evolution" in 2003. According to that article, the concept that landscape patterns affect how organisms are distributed dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries in the writings of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and Alfred Russel Wallace. The modern field is interdisciplinary and integrates not only population genetics and landscape ecology, but also the field of spatial statistics. As of 2008, over 655 articles had been published in the field in a variety of genetics and ecological journals.
Landscape genetics | History
This study of natural history was most powerfully advanced by Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution first published in his book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Research in geology and evolutionary biology naturally led to the question of how old the Earth was. Indeed, between the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s, this was the topic of increasingly sophisticated intellectual discussions. With the advent of thermodynamics, it became clear that the Earth and the Sun must have an old but finite age. Whatever the energy source of the Sun, it must be finite, and since it is constantly dissipating, there must be a day when the Sun runs out of energy.
Victorian era | Natural history