دانلود کتاب الگوی تغییر – مطالعه‌ای ریاضی و فلسفی در مورد چگونگی نگاه ما به جهان

The only constant in this world of change is change itself. So it is often said. Already Heraclitus living in the fifth century BCE famously emphasized the flux that underlies all things, and change is the central feature of the famous Yijing (I Ching, The Book of Changes) that dates back some five centuries earlier. Life leaves us with no doubt about the reality of change. But is it really true that there are no other constants than change itself? Change is not entirely random—it is not without predictable effects. Within change there arise forms and patterns, and were it not for these, which we observe, predict, and depend on, there would be no world full of life with its amazing forms that arise, thrive, and regenerate in the great cycles of things. To say that the only constant is change itself is too blunt. What emerges from change is pattern, and it is pattern that we can recognize and depend on. Is it not the case that rivers are rivers because something about them does not change, something that supports both fish and fishermen? A closer look at what Heraclitus said reveals that he understood more than we cannot step into the same river twice: As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them. [94, fragment L] This suggests that although we cannot step into the same river water twice, what makes the river a river is its flowing water: no flow, no river. The river is defined as a pattern through its flow. Here we sense a deeper understanding of how sameness/difference turns out to be an important way in which we continuously reposition ourselves. The river stays the same by always consisting of new (other) water. It is the same river because it is in how it changes that it becomes itself. Thus sameness and difference are together what makes a river a river. This is the underlying theme of this book: the world is a world of change, but change manifests itself in the form of pattern. It is through these patterns of change, which we recognize and act upon, that we are able to live in this world. We might even say that they are how we come to “make” our world; and so it is for all forms of life. Still, as a word in English, pattern itself is a nebulous entity. There are weather patterns, dress patterns, holding patterns for planes, patterns of behavior, patterns of numbers, flocking patterns, and on and on ad infinitum. We have heard pattern described as being as information, as memory, as repetition, all of which have elements of truth, and mathematics has been called the science of patterns. Yet out of all this variety of ideas there is one that strikes us as fundamental, even universal—the one that we have already alluded to: the origin of pattern is dynamic, pattern is the signifier and identifier of change.