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Listen to my heartbeat; the rain on the roof and the pitter patter of little feet. Look at the waves lapping at the shore, the petals on a rose. Understand this.
Knowledge, expressed or perceived depends on information arranged according to patterns. A singular instance may attract our attention but its repeatable and extensible relationship to others of its kind engages and keeps that attention. That which engages us is what we come to know. Patterns have long featured in the decorative arts and architecture. Indeed they have come to characterize, even signify some of the cultures that incorporate them in their artifacts. At a deeper level the dialectic of predictability and extensibility, in effect syntax, is what allows human language to operate. Above the symbolic meaning of individual words, syntax, a pattern generating feature, is what most profoundly distinguishes one language from another. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the fine arts, at least those provinces that are conceptually or philosophically driven, would devote some attention to patterns.
Certain areas of science, mathematics and design have developed specializations concerned with the phenomena, or at least the epiphenomena of patterns. Are patterns epiphenomenal? Are they merely a consequence of other things? Are they things in and of themselves, or are they fundamental features of generative systems? That is, are patterns metaphenomenal?
Can we enhance the way we understand the world, and the ways in we express our understanding through better insights into the nature of patterns? What have artists, designers, scientists, mathematicians, artisans and philosophers had to say about and with patterns?
Certain shapes, eg. branching, spheroid, sinusoid, symmetries, eg. bilateral, explosion, radial, and rhythms, eg. circadian, infradian, circaseptan, circannual, appear to recur in nature. In the case of many temporal patterns, eg. biological rhythms, the formal -functional relationship is clearly recognized as deriving from the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun. The consequences of these biorhythms continue to fuel study areas with significant implications for science, medicine, the arts and society in general.
With regard to the spatial patterns, shapes and symmetries, the formal -functional relationships appear to be less obvious. None the less discoveries in disciplines as seemingly disparate as e.g. architecture [Hillier], sociobiology [Levi], mechanical engineering [Bejan], computer science [Smith], mathematics [Mandelbrot] continue to shed light on the shape related properties of natural and artificial systems (c.f. Glieck, Willis).
The course of study seeks identify classes and types of spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal patterns.
These pattern classes are expected to fall into two basic super-classes: deterministic and non-deterministic patterns. Deterministic patterns are those in which a form emerges from a specific sequence of operations, e.g. the apparent growth of a shadow resulting from the rotation of the earth relative to the angle of incidence of sunlight. Non-deterministic patterns are those that arise from the interaction of multiple autonomous agents,e.g. the form of a school of minnows, a flock of pigeons or automobiles in traffic. These pattern classes are expected to include pattern types that occur in natural and artificial objects, and as a consequence of processes in both natural and artificial systems.