I just watched a fantastic video which really captures some of the concepts presented in Chapter 4 of Mollison's Permaculture, a Designers' Manual, which is all about pattern understanding. The video is about synchronization in nature specifically, but in discussing that it directly or indirectly points to ideas like pulsers, timers, waves, harmonics, boundary conditions, stress, and various design principles. (The cliché permaculture pattern of a spiral is visible even in the heart, for instance!)
The ending (minus the commercial product plug) also adds a little emphasis to the danger of reductionist thinking compared to the exciting possibilities of looking at systems as a whole. It could serve as a great discussion point for any PDC teachers out there.
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