Plants do better math than people

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 14, 2011

Culture, Mathematics}

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At Creation-Evolution Headlines, we learn (July 11, 2011):

Plants perform a wonder that has attracted the admiration of scholars from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome to modern times: the ability to reproduce mathematically perfect patterns. This ability, called phyllotaxis, can be described mathematically with the Fibonacci Series and the Golden Angle. The beautiful spirals in sunflowers, artichokes, cacti, dandelion heads and other plants continue to fascinate children and adults today, but those are not the only examples. Leaves on a stem can emerge in phyllotactic patterns like a spiral staircase, and depending on the environment, plants can switch patterns at different stages in development.

In Current Biology, French biologists Jean-Christophe Palauqui and Patrick Laufs recounted some of the theories that have tried to explain phyllotaxis. More.

Plants have a built-in mechanism for arranging themselves, based on math, so what does that tell you? That math is a human construct?

Comments

And one word explains it all: teleonomy.Mung_{July 15, 2011
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Damme, that’s because plants created themselves, you boobs. What happened was this: a bunch of atoms got together and had a party. Some decided to hang and some decided to go and the next thing you knew you had the beginnings of a plant! It wasn’t much, but it was a start! Lizzie will tell you! Then sex took over. Bees know a pretty flower when they see it, so they started pollinating the prettiest flowers they could see until the flowers swirled and whirled and Finbonaccied and you wouldn’t believe the things those flowers started to do! And all because of sex! So let’s get started right away and make this world a more beautiful place! Birds do it, bees do it, even Richard Dawkins does it! Now you may be wondering: which came first, the flowers or the bees? This may seem like a conundrum to the humdrum mind. But that’s just lack of imagination. You have to remember that evolution took place over a Very Long Period of Time! Flowers-bees-flowers-bees, it was the Dance of Nature for millions and billions of years! Don’t you people get it? I’M TALKING TO YOU!!!allanius_{July 15, 2011
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I hate to be a party-pooper, but to say plants do math is putting the cart before the horse. It is far more accurate to say what plants do can be described mathematically, which is a much different thing. If I said that a drunken person does a better random walk than someone who is sober, does not mean that they are better-versed in intricacies of two-dimensional statistics. Plants produce patterns that are mathematically describable (and frequently beautiful to observe) because of the simplicity and uniformity of their growth, generally based on a simpler rule set; much as the Mandlebrot set, a pattern of unimaginable complexity and beauty, is the inevitable outcome of a simple mathematical rule multiplied endlessly. It does not make it any less remarkable, but it is nothing at all to do with ability to do math.SCheesman_{July 14, 2011
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fn; Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum teleportation: ===================== Logic also dictates 'a decision' must have been made, by the 'transcendent, eternal, infinite information' from the primary timeless (eternal) reality 'It' inhabits, in order to purposely create a temporal reality with highly specified, irreducible complex, parameters from a infinite set of possibilities in the proper sequential order. Thus this infinite transcendent information, which is the primary reality of our reality, is shown to be alive by yet another line of evidence besides the necessity for a ‘first mover’ to explain quantum wave collapse. The First Cause Must Be A Personal Being - William Lane Craig - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/4813914 "The Big Bang represents an immensely powerful, yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space and time. All this is accomplished within the strict confines of very carefully fine-tuned physical constants and laws. The power and care this explosion reveals exceeds human mental capacity by multiple orders of magnitude." Prof. Henry F. Schaefer -bornagain77_{July 14, 2011
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Related video with beautiful animation in the last part of video: Fibonacci Numbers – The Fingerprint of God – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5988843/ ,,As far as the math article cited; mathematical information is not some abstract entity, or some platonic realm, but it is found that 'transcendent', logical, math actually governs physical reality itself,,, governs a physical reality that itself reduces to 'transcendent' information,,, reduces to 'transcendent' information such as what the mathematical equations themselves are in their primary essence: ‘In chapter 2, I talk at some length on the Schroedinger Equation which is called the fundamental equation of chemistry. It’s the equation that governs the behavior of the basic atomic particles subject to the basic forces of physics. This equation is a partial differential equation with a complex valued solution. By complex valued I don’t mean complicated, I mean involving solutions that are complex numbers, a+b^i, which is extraordinary that the governing equation, basic equation, of physics, of chemistry, is a partial differential equation with complex valued solutions. There is absolutely no reason why the basic particles should obey such a equation that I can think of except that it results in elements and chemical compounds with extremely rich and useful chemical properties. In fact I don’t think anyone familiar with quantum mechanics would believe that we’re ever going to find a reason why it should obey such an equation, they just do! So we have this basic, really elegant mathematical equation, partial differential equation, which is my field of expertise, that governs the most basic particles of nature and there is absolutely no reason why, anyone knows of, why it does, it just does. British physicist Sir James Jeans said “From the intrinsic evidence of His creation, the great architect of the universe begins to appear as a pure mathematician”, so God is a mathematician to’. Granville Sewell i.e. the Atheistic Materialist is at a complete loss to explain why this should be so, whereas the Christian Theist has presupposed such ‘transcendent’ control from the beginning,,, John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. of note; 'the Word' is translated from the Greek word ‘Logos’. Logos happens to be the word from which we derive our modern word ‘Logic’. notes: Michael Denton – Mathematical Truths Are Transcendent And Beautiful – Square root of -1 is built into the fabric of reality – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4003918 THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS - DAVID P. GOLDMAN - August 2010 Excerpt: we cannot construct an ontology that makes God dispensable. Secularists can dismiss this as a mere exercise within predefined rules of the game of mathematical logic, but that is sour grapes, for it was the secular side that hoped to substitute logic for God in the first place. Gödel's critique of the continuum hypothesis has the same implication as his incompleteness theorems: Mathematics never will create the sort of closed system that sorts reality into neat boxes. http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201008/2080027241.html Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Galileo Galilei The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner Excerpt: The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html The Underlying Mathematical Foundation Of The Universe -Walter Bradley - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4491491 The Five Foundational Equations of the Universe and Brief Descriptions of Each: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfNDdnc3E4bmhkZg&hl=en How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? — Albert Einstein “… if nature is really structured with a mathematical language and mathematics invented by man can manage to understand it, this demonstrates something extraordinary. The objective structure of the universe and the intellectual structure of the human being coincide.” – Pope Benedict XVI "The reason that mathematics is so effective in capturing, expressing, and modeling what we call empirical reality is that there is a ontological correspondence between the two - I would go so far as to say that they are the same thing." Richard Sternberg - Pg. 8 How My Views On Evolution Evolved ===================== Systematic Search for Expressions of Dimensionless Constants using the NIST database of Physical Constants Excerpt: The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 325 constants on their website as ‘Fundamental Physical Constants’. Among the 325 physical constants listed, 79 are unitless in nature (usually by defining a ratio). This produces a list of 246 physical constants with some unit dependence. These 246 physical constants can be further grouped into a smaller set when expressed in standard SI base units.,,, http://www.mit.edu/~mi22295/constants/constants.html The following articles show that even atoms (Ions) are subject to teleportation: Ions have been teleported successfully for the first time by two independent research groups Excerpt: In fact, copying isn't quite the right word for it. In order to reproduce the quantum state of one atom in a second atom, the original has to be destroyed. This is unavoidable - it is enforced by the laws of quantum mechanics, which stipulate that you can't 'clone' a quantum state. In principle, however, the 'copy' can be indistinguishable from the original (that was destroyed),,, http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2004/October/beammeup.asp Atom takes a quantum leap - 2009 Excerpt: Ytterbium ions have been 'teleported' over a distance of a metre.,,, "What you're moving is information, not the actual atoms," says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2171769/posts ====================bornagain77_{July 14, 2011
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