Nature’s Patterns
The first volume (Shapes) of my trilogy on pattern formation, Nature’s Patterns (OUP), is now out. Sort of. At any event, it should be in the shops soon. Nearly all the hiccups with the figures got ironed out in the end (thank you Chantal for your patience) – there are one or two things to put right in the reprints/paperback. Sorry, I tried my best. The second and third volumes (Flow and Branches) are not officially available until (I believe) July and September respectively. But if you talk to OUP sweetly enough, you might get lucky. Better still, they should be on sale at talks, such as the one I’m scheduled to give at the Cheltenham Science Festival on 4 June (8 pm). Maybe see you there.
Your chapter, Lessons of the Beehive, is a wonderfully clear account of nature, structure and space. And the rationalisation behind the occurrence of Fibonacci sequences in nature is particularly clear-sighted.
ReplyDeleteI am most indebted to you, however, for drawing to my attention Turing's work on life's patterns. I'd no idea he did work in this field, and his structures, later known as activator-inhibitor models, are compellingly described in Shapes.
Flow and Branch are now by some distance the books I am most looking forward to reading this year.