Natural reflections

This is an interesting piece in the Telegraph on geometric echoes of natural shapes in the forms of alphabetic symbols (and not simply pictographs). The authors suggest a kind of built-in epistemology to the alphabet based on what the human eye recognizes as meaningful. Since the human eye is embedded within "nature," meaningful symbols are taken and adapted from the recognizable shapes found in the environment.

The team set out to explore the idea that the visual signs we use have been selected, whatever the culture, to reflect common contours, landscapes and shapes in natural scenes that human brains have evolved to be good at seeing."Writing should look like nature, in a way," said Dr Changizi, explaining how similar reasoning has been used to explain the sounds, signs and colours that animals, insects and so on use to tell each other they are, for example, receptive to sex.

To be able to compare Cyrillic, Arabic or whatever, they turned to the mathematics of topology, which focuses on the way elements are connected together in a letter rather than overall shape, so that fonts do not matter and nor does handwriting, whether neat calligraphy or crudely written with a crayon grasped in a clenched fist.

For example, each time you see a T, geometrical features and frills such as serifs may differ according to the font or handwriting but the topology remains the same. By the same token, L, T, and X represent the three topologically distinct configurations that can be built with exactly two segments. And, to a topological mind, an L is the same as a V. In this way, the team could classify different configurations of strokes, or segments, to boil an alphabet of alphabets down to their essentials...

Remarkably, the study revealed regularities in the distribution of (topological) shapes across approximately 100 phonemic (non-logographic) writing systems, where characters stand for sounds, and across symbols. "Whether you use Chinese or physics symbols, the shapes that are common in one are common in the others," said Dr Changizi.

On one hand, this is a fascinating discovery. Alphabets and words are fascinating things; perhaps the most underappreciated human technological innovation. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious. Lewis Mumford, in his great tome on the city - The City in History - suggested a similar point in relation to urban spaces, architecture, and the construction of relations between humans in urban areas. One particular example comes to mind. The scythe was used to mow the grass on pathways and routes within pre-medieval European towns. The pattern left in the grass by the scythe's swath was in the shape of an arc whose peak was, of course, the point at which human arms were both outstretched. But when street-paving was developed further, it often tended to follow that same pattern. We can still find paving especially in the medieval areas of cities that has this curved pattern.

In fact, the Mumford example points to a more complex relationship between humans/culture and nature. Yes, it is one of dependency, forgotten amidst smokestacks, nuclear weapons, the romanticization of nature, and the über-anthropocentric Schumpeterian belief (of orthodox neoclassical economics) that any damage human beings do to the natural environment shall be overcome by human technological innovation. Human beings have long imagined in various ways their independence and superiority from "nature." Plato vaulted the perfection of the Forms over the realm of becoming. Augustine and Kant took animals to be beasts of burden placed on earth for the benefit of human beings. Descartes thought only humans have a soul and the yelping of a dog undergoing dissection was a mechanical feature of nature. Industrialists believed in the mystical might of human technological adaptation and the holiness of economy.

On the other hand, Rousseau thought society/culture were corruptive of individuals from their previously peaceful relations in the "state of nature." Ecological thought - beginning with Marsh and Haeckel (the latter who coined the term, "oekologie"), and extending through Muir, Leopold, Carson, Schumacher, Wilson, and many others - argues an interdependence between human/culture and nature. This interdependence doesn't need to be romanticized, as it is with Rousseau and Muir. It is factual, and the interaction yields "value."

Nature imposes limits - as the study above suggests - on humans that run as deep as what we are able even to see. We can't see - whether with our senses or "the mind's eye" - without some familiarity, some orientation to our surroundings. The relation is more than over-against, and it is more than romanticization of the thing our own activity makes us lose. The human/nature relation is of the essence, if I can use the term, and human attempts to withdraw and exalt humanity over the limiting features of the natural are always drawn back to nature as if by magnetic force. Emerson wrote, "we have such exorbitant eyes, that on seeing the smallest arc, we complete the curve...." We can't, however, complete the curve without the arc.