What Is This Shape Called?

[Khandro]

In the centre of a sunflower is a seed pattern similar to the shape of a galaxy seen side-on, or the sparks from a Catherine wheel firework, like the beginning of lots of rotating spirals all starting out from the same central point. Does this form have name please?

[Baldric]

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5985588/15-uncanny-examples-of-the-golden-ratio-in-nature

[Khandro]

Thanks Baldric, the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are more like describing the process which forms the pattern and I wondered if it had a name as such. I have a sunflower in a vase on my table at the moment and the amazing thing about it is that the pattern works simultaneously left and right handed. If I were to try to make an accurate drawing of it it would take year.
The small forecourt to my village church has this pattern laid in granite cobblestones, so I guess paviers must have a name for it.

[Jonathan-Joe]

It's a particular form of logarithmic spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_spiral
called a golden spiral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_spiral

[Khandro]

jonathan; Thanks, but if you look at the sunflower picture in Baldric's link above you can see its not just one spiral, but many, all emanating from the same central point, so it could be called, 'multiple logarithmic spirals' but I doubt it. Maybe it doesn't have a name - which would be odd.

[mibn2cweus]

Doth a rose by any other name . . .

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33139147@N00/galleries/72157624699308166/#photo_1216111114

[Khandro]

mibn2cweus; Fabulous, but when man tries to compete with nature as with the wickerwork it looks feeble - though whoever laid those tiles did a marvellous job of work.
The seed pod is staggeringly beautiful in its 'simplicity'.

Are you not tempted to consider I.D. ?

[mibn2cweus]

It's only natural that one would suspect 'intelligent design' until one comes to appreciate the means by which mother nature performs her miracles, at which point, with an understanding of that process it becomes apparent that . . . it's only natural.

[Khandro]

"it's only natural." Hmmmm! Can't you see, what is 'natural' is perhaps only the visible manifestation of something bigger, and underlying everything?
P.S. I didn't start this thread for this reason though.

[Old_Geezer]

Not in the slightest tempted to consider creationism. There's no need.

[Khandro]

Really! why's that OG?

[Khandro]

Creationism isn't though a word I would use.

[Zacs-Master]

Khandro, I think you're falling into the trap of 'I can#t find a reasonable explanation for this, so i'll invent a deity to explain it all'
It's been going on for centuries. Millennia infact.

[Khandro]

Zacs; Forget OG's word, 'creationism'. Do you think these underlying patterns in the above examples and those found in say non-Euclidean geometry have arrived there by some sort of accident ? If so, wouldn't that be even more miraculous than belief that they were part of some design?

[pixie374]

Evolution is just self-design.

[Khandro]

This nobel prizewinner thinks so,
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23453106-a-beautiful-question

I can recommend the book, I sent my copy on to another sceptical ABer and it seems to have altered his views somewhat - at least he never came back. :0)

[Khandro]

^^^ That's addressed to Zacs and OG

[Zacs-Master]

'Do you think these underlying patterns in the above examples and those found in say non-Euclidean geometry have arrived there by some sort of accident'

Not accident, no....evolution. As a VERY simple example, a bee's honeycomb with its hexagonal pattern could be taken to be 'designed' whereas it is simply the strongest and most efficient shape. Seeing regular patterns in nature (Giants causeway as another simple example) could lead one to conclude the workings of a 'designer' when in fact physics is at the heart of it.

[Khandro]

Zacs; The necessity of natural forms is true, but physics isn't at the "heart" of anything, it is purely our (arguably limited) tool for trying to understand the world in which we live. And how would it account for the reality of the Fibonacci sequence and the forms found by projective non-Euclidean geometry?

[mibn2cweus]

The problem at the heart of 'intelligent design' is that it offers no explanation for how an alleged 'intelligent designer' came to exist, whereas evolution clearly demonstrates the essential process necessary for the development of complex systems, some of which have inherited through natural selection the means by which intelligence arises. Such an understanding likewise relies on the development and reasoned use of ones own intelligence.

[Zacs-Master]

What he said ^^^^^