Metapatterns [Hardcover]

Tyler Volk (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 023106750X | ISBN-13: 978-0231067508 | Publication Date: April 15, 1995 | Edition: First Printing

In the interdisciplinary tradition of Buckminster Fuller's work, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature, and Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics, Metapatterns embraces both nature and culture, seeking out the grand-scale patterns that help explain the functioning of our universe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Volk gives us new ways of thinking about and looking at the world. Intriguingly illustrated with computer and hand drawings, collages and photographs, his lyrical meditation will appeal to scientists, New Age types, interdisciplinary thinkers and the intellectually adventurous. -- Review

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE: WHAT ARE THE METAPATTERNS?

I have borrowed the word metapattern from Gregory Bateson (19041980). The great synthesizer used it in his masterpiece, Mind and Nature. Oddly, the word appeared only once--though prominently--in the introduction. There Bateson, who worked in anthropology, biology, philosophy, epistemology, cybernetics, and ecology, conveyed the key to his method of thinking. He did so by way of a story.

When teaching, he would pull a crab from a bag. Then the Socratic inquiry would begin: In what ways do the two claw-equipped limbs of a crab share a common anatomy, despite differences in pincer size? Now, how do these large front limbs resemble the crab's walking appendages? Repeat the process with a lobster. Then, how do crabs compare with lobsters? Finally, how does this generalized arthropod pattern compare with the mammalian pattern, drawn from a parallel exercise with a human and a horse? Along the way, he would urge his responders to keep in mind what he called "the discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.''

What does one gain, what does one perceive by moving through these layers of comprehension? Patterns of patterns--metapatterns.

Bateson took this method well beyond the borders of comparative biology in his quest for the "patterns that connect'' (perhaps his most remembered phrase). Consider biological evolution and human learning, for example. To Bateson they were both instances of a more inclusive pattern. Both use the metapattern of variation and selection--an explosion of possibilities followed by a culling with a strong component of efficacy--to forge a trail in the possibility space of new configurations. One yields forms in the biological world; the other, forms in the psyche.

I was fortunate to have studied with Bateson while he was writing Mind and Nature. It was autumn of 1977, and he was scholar-in-residence at the Lindisfarne Association in New York City. Once every two weeks he held an all-day, free-wheeling seminar, which I could attend because of the itinerant nature and scattered schedule of my work as a freelance plumber, carpenter, and teacher. At that time I was teaching two courses at The School of Visual Arts: "Visual Science'' and "Patterns in Time.'' The first looked at universal patterns in space (here chapters 1-6); the second, in time (chapters 7-10).

The main patterns I was playing with then--spheres, borders, arrows, breaks, and the like--survived the two decades of alternating scrutiny and inattention. The sub-metapatterns, here the sections within chapters, were still years away from making their presence known to me. And only recently have I taken Bateson's term to heart and mind as the overarching descriptor for what continues to be, for me, a family of inspiring concepts.

Initial glimpses of the metapatterns owed to a period of immersion in nature in the early 1970s, during several years of freethinking and wandering after graduating college with a degree in architecture (which I was not keen on immediately utilizing, despite a passion for the subject). Later, in the early 1980s, when I gave up my collaged career to pursue a doctorate in energy and earth sciences, the metapatterns continued to animate and, yes, haunt me. To my delight I found that even the esoteric crannies of disciplinary science were their domain. Metapatterns helped me formulate models of the ocean's carbon cycle and understand the structure of scientific debates. And when, in the 1990s as a tenured professor, I had time during summers and a sabbatical to concentrate on this book, the metapatterns expanded into vistas of questions I could easily spend a lifetime on.

I have offered Bateson's round-about definition of a metapattern. What of mine?

To me, a metapattern is a pattern so wide-flung that it appears throughout the spectrum of reality: in clouds, rivers, and planets; in cells, organisms, and ecosystems; in art, architecture, and politics. The third set, representing all of human creativity, is especially rich with what I perceive as metapatterns--as it should be. Images and insights that pull at my own thoughts are sure to have influenced those of others.

I use the word metapattern in the Batesonian spirit--as a pattern of patterns--and seek examples at the very broadest scale. Alas, my definition, too, is round-about. I define metapatterns by saying where they are found and how I use them. But what are they? And are they out there (patterns sensed) or in here (patterns imagined)?

Suppose you were asked to define a canoe. You describe a canoe's shape, its dimensions, materials, even methods of construction--as if preparing to build or at least to recognize one. In another type of answer you might describe what a canoe does, how it functions, namely, carrying a person across water. Perhaps in this case the listener might need to use the canoe.

There is yet a third way of responding. Rather than saying anything directly about the canoe, you describe the experience of being in a canoe, what can be seen while paddling around--perhaps creeks tumbling from forested gorges into a secluded lake. This third way of answering is the way I have chosen to present the metapatterns.

This book is thus a travelogue. It contains views of reality seen from the canoe of metapatterns. The various creeks I visit are the many disciplines--physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, psychology, mythology, culture. Because metapatterns have given me a canoe for exploration, they are admittedly something I have constructed, a self-developed way of thinking. But this is only part of the story, one face of a rich metaphor.

Let's say that the metapatterns are not the canoe but the lake itself. Just as the feeder streams flow into this single body of water, so too the streams from many regions of reality pour into the great reservoir of metapatterns. Perhaps the metapatterns are attractors--functional universals for forms in space, processes in time, and concepts in mind. Surely in this mind they have served as such. I invite you to let them enter into yours. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; First Printing edition (April 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 023106750X
• ISBN-13: 978-0231067508
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,009,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tyler Volk is Science Director for Environmental Studies and Professor of Biology at New York University. Recipient of the NYU All-University Distinguished Teaching Award, Volk lectures and travels widely, communicates his ideas in a variety of media, plays lead guitar for the science-inspired rock band The Amygdaloids, and is an avid outdoorsman. Volk's previous books include CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge; Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind; and Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was Tyler Volk's student!, April 18, 2004

By 

Matthew Evinger (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Metapatterns (Hardcover)

As a freshman at NYU, I had a seminar with Tyler Volk based around Metapatterns. It is difficult to characterize the book without going on for pages, but I will do my best. Metapatterns is epistemology, meditation, mythology, systems theory, ecology, and a thousand other fields of thought. As Volk defines it, a metapattern is a "pattern of patterns... so wide-flung that it appears throughout the spectrum of reality: in clouds, rivers and planets; in cells, organisms, and ecosystems; in art, architecture, and politics." Volk is essentially a tour guide with only a rough outline of an itinerary, but this is a good thing: rigid formalism would preclude many of the connections he is making. Since each chapter is an account of one of the patterns' appearances and significance throughout the "spectrum of reality," there is a lot of ground to cover. This results in an unconventional structure but it's still easy to follow Volk from one point to the next. The collages interspersed through the book help with this a lot, especially since the whole idea of metapatterns is largely visual. Most of the time Volk is both comprehensive and coherent, but this is not always true. Occasionally (I'm sticking with the expedition metaphor here) some bushwhacking is required to get back to the original path. But the further you get into the book, the more you can follow its logic. "Spheres," the first chapter, is the strongest, and best makes the case. This may be because the sphere is, in a sense, the primary metapattern. Later chapters spring off in different directions. Some seem not to fit well (calendars, for example), but the whole time you are getting a better sense of what is actually going through Volk's mind. And eventually, as you move through the book, the ideas become self-evident. The metapatterns come to seem archetypal.
Some of the students in the seminar complained that Metapatterns was too long, too rambling, and didn't really have a point. They had a few good points, but it seemed that those students were expecting the book to provide The Answer. Metapatterns, as I understand it, is only laying out an idea. It provides a new way of looking at things, a way that could lead to some new answers, but it is not claiming to be The Answer. Part of the idea is that fields of thought are so compartmentalized and narrowly focused that a broader development is stunted. But the really revolutionary work happens in the spaces between! Bridging two or more fields allows for totally new angles on old questions. There's no inherent problem with specialization; it is only a problem when it happens to the exclusion of other avenues of thought. Volk is interdisciplinary to a point that is nearly all-encompassing.
Amazon.com states that scientists, New Age types, interdisciplinary thinkers and the intellectually adventurous will best like the book. This is true, but the book is jargon-free and easily understandable (i.e., NOT a standard science book). Do not allow yourself to peg the book; it will most likely shake off any label you apply. Instead, just pick it up without any agenda and you will probably take away something worthwhile.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Form, space, & disorder?, July 1, 2000

By 

Michael M. Simpson, R.A. (Red Bank, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Metapatterns (Paperback)

As a practicing architect who has a regular opportunity to explore the "meaningful making of space" this book was quite an eye opener. I've spent a great deal of time looking for order amongst the disorder of everyday life and the designed environment, finding the threads in "Metapatterns" was a good pathway to understanding the relationships. If Lou Kahn were alive today, it would probably take him to new spaces and forms. Excellent!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars extraordinary and revolutionizing, July 4, 2006

By 

Jeffrey W. Bloom (Flagstaff, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Metapatterns (Hardcover)

Tyler Volk's book, Metapatterns..., is an extraordinary book. In the spirit of Gregory Bateson from whom the term "metapatterns" originates, he does not give the reader the whole story or "the answer," but rather provides a rich source for readers to develop their own stories and their own answers (or to make metapatterns their own). As an educator and researcher, I have found the metapatterns described by Volk to be infinitely useful as (a) tools for analyzing data from studies of cognition, discourse, classrooms, interpersonal relationships, the politics of schooling, etc.; (b) tools for designing social and physical contexts of classrooms, curriculum, and representations of material; and (c) the specific content to study in courses. Since metapatterns appear almost everywhere in every discipline and in every aspect of everyday life, they address our basic understandings of the world in ways that can allow us to make connections in new and exciting ways. It is truly a revolutionizing book. When I have taught courses based on metapatterns, the better students have cursed me for introducing metapatterns: "damn you! All I see is metapatterns!" Such comments are a testament to the power of metapatterns in transforming the way we see the world. This book is a must read for those who are willing to take fresh view of their worlds, to think critically and creatively, and to take control of their own learning rather than be spoon fed answers.