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500.2/Ball
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Subjects
Published
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press c2009.
Language
English
Main Author
Philip Ball, 1962- (-)
Item Description
Cover title.
"Nature's Patterns is a trilogy composed of Shapes, Flow, Branches"--Series title page.
Physical Description
221 p. [4] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780199237982
  • 1. A Winter's Tale: The Six-Pointed Snowflake
  • 2. Tenuous Monsters: Shapes Between Dimensions
  • 3. Just For the Crack: Clean Breaks and Ragged Ruptures
  • 4. Water Ways: Labyrinths in the Landscape
  • 5. Tree and Leaf: Branches in Biology
  • 6. Web Worlds: Why We're All in This Together
  • 7. The Threads of the Tapestry: Principles of Pattern
  • Bibliography
Review by Choice Review

Ball, a science writer and consultant editor for Nature magazine, has produced a three-volume exploration of nature's capacity to produce endless patterns from living and nonliving materials. Over time and under infinitely varying conditions, physical, chemical, and biological forces generate the constantly changing world in which we live. These changes are governed by elegant, far-reaching principles, which are the focus of the author's explorations. In the first volume, Shapes, he examines a number of familiar pattern types in nature and identifies the physical and mathematical principles that underlie their formation. Using D'Arcy Thompson's work as a springboard, he touches on a wide variety of natural forms ranging from radiolaria, cell membranes, and butterfly wings to seashells, leopard spots, and termite mounds.In the second of the series, Flow, the author discusses the patterned consistency of forms in motion--in different time frames and under different circumstances--that reveal a deep unity within nature. Beginning with Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of turbulence and Harold Edgerton's high-speed photographs, Ball proceeds through a consideration of ordered flows, convection patterns, and the properties of chaotic systems, which he sees as the unifying principles that tie together such disparate phenomena as the hexagonal patterns of both beehives and Saturn's north pole, and the granular behavior of sand dunes on Mars and convection cells in the sun's photosphere.The last volume is Branches. From the snowflake crystals and the fractal character of mountain terrains to waterways, bacterial colonies, and social networks, another set of underlying principles emerge, producing patterns of branching, self-similarity, and interconnection. This work draws on a variety of disciplines from physics, chemistry, and geology to biology, sociology, and mathematics. Ball is an inspired generalist who is able to take different intellectual and academic perspectives, as well as wildly divergent natural phenomena, and weave them into a coherent tapestry that will serve the professional and the casual reader alike. The writing is both precise and readable, and the generous illustrations--line diagrams, black-and-white photos, and color plates--are fascinating, informative, and consistently well done. Although a number of works like this have been published in recent years, few have been of similar quality. These three volumes are a worthwhile addition to any library collection. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; general audiences. R. M. Davis emeritus, Albion College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.