The Self Made Tapestry {ReadingNotes}

The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature by Philip Ball - ISBN 0198502443 - Oxford University Press 1999

Motivation

Describe in a sentences or two what motivated me to read this book.

Pre-reading model

Draw a schema (using PmGraphViz or another solution) of the situation of the area in the studied domain before having read the book.

Skimming

• first pass with titles and conclusions
  • chapters organized by what patterns are then listing the different patterns across different levels of complexity, from the molecular to the social then concluding on principles
  • multiple references to On Growth and Form by Thompson D'Arcy (referred pages 6-8, 11-13, 17, 23, 40-2, 44-5, 48-9, 176, 252-3)
  • concluding that "one of the principal messages of this book [is] that we can map many of nature's tapestries onto some universal blueprints, in which specifies cease to matter."

See also

• notes on his book on the history of chemistry Elegant Solutions
• Philip Ball Science Writer homepage
• Geoffrey West and his work on power law in life and complexity for the Santa Fe Institute (referred p132)
  • his talk on Scaling Laws In Biology And Other Complex Systems, Google Tech talks 2007
• Benoit B. Mandelbrot and his work on fractals (referred pages 116-17, 153, 159, 161, 194)
• Ron Eglash on African fractals, TED.com 2007
• Navier-Stokes equations and Logarithmic spiral, equiangular spiral or growth spiral according to Wikipedia
• websites on art by code and even more on External links of Generative art in Wikipedia
  • Art From Code by Keith Peter
  • Generator.x: Software and generative strategies in art and design
  • ContextFreeArt.org
  • Complexification.net by Jared Tarbell
  • Michael Hansmeyer Computational Architecture
  • see also A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Computer Art by Holle Humphries, The Journal of Aesthetic Education 2003
• Chemistry meets computing also by Philip Ball, Nature 406, 118-120 2000)

Overall remarks and questions

• this? that?

Synthesis

So in the end, it was about X and was based on Y.

Critics

Point A, B and C are debatable because of e, f and j.

Vocabulary

(:new_vocabulary_start:) new_word (:new_vocabulary_end:)

Post-reading model

Draw a schema (using PmGraphViz or another solution) of the situation of the area in the studied domain after having read the book. Link it to the pre-reading model and align the two to help easy comparison.

Categories

• Biology

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