The search for pattern, beauty & intelligent life…

by | Thursday, August 22, 2013

Connecting birds nests to “crop circles under the ocean” leading to some thoughts on perception, beauty and finding intelligent life in the universe (or maybe even on this planet).

The other day I found a bird’s nest on my front lawn. Most probably it had fallen down from the tree above. Here it is. It is a tiny thing. One regular egg would fit snugly in it.

nest

As I looked at it closely I was struck (actually blown away) its beauty and perfection—strands and grass woven together with such care! One can just marvel at the time, effort and skill that must have gone into building it. And remember the only tool available was a beak!

I know I would not be able to create something this intricate. So much for my large frontal cortex and opposable thumb… Guess who’s the bird brain now!

There are those, who I think, will be somewhat underwhelmed by my response to this nest. What’s the big deal they will wonder, it’s just a nest. We’ve seen hundreds of these… That may be, but I think many of us think we have seen a nest – but truly we haven’t. Learning to see is a skill or an art that needs to be cultivated. I had made a similar point in a previous post – where where I spoke of finding beauty in banality. I wrote there about the importance of distinguishing between recognition and perception. Recognition is about seeing things for how they have been labelled or categorized (this is a nest! ho hum), while perception is about seeing things for what they are! Perception requires letting go (in so far as possible) of prior categories and classifications.

I was reminded of this nest a few days ago when I came this article about underwater crop circles—another intricate, circular structure similar to the nest (see image below). These circular structures with radiating spokes were first discovered in the 1980’s off the coast of Japan. Scientists till recently did not have  sense of how these structures came to be.

crop-circle

As this article (The mystery of underwater crop circles, explained) describes it, these shapes on the bottom of the ocean floor are created by a tiny, 5 inch, puffer fish.

Males spent seven to nine days building their respective circles by repeatedly swimming in and out of the circle, using their fins to dig valleys in the sandy bottom.

Of course all this is done for one reason – that of attracting a beautiful female pufferfish (it’s a story worth reading in full). And yes, there is even a video of this little fish engaged in creating this design. This is truly the most amazing video I have seen in a long time.

Note (August, 2023): The original video I had embedded here seems to have disappeared. I replaced it with the one below.

As I think of this underwater design and the nest – two examples of what Dawkins would call extended phenotype—I think of the brilliance of natural selection. A blind, non-teleologial process that leads to such amazing results. I think of the intelligence encoded in the genes of these tiny fish and birds… an intelligence that is so different from yours and mine. And then I  wonder about what intelligence will look like on other planets… when even the ones here seem so alien to me.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Capital City River Run, Half Marathon

This weekend I completed my sixth Capital City River Run. I participated in the half-marathon and completed it at a 10:10 pace, a total time of 2 hours 13 minutes (and 2 seconds, but who is counting). Interestingly this pace was actually better than my pace the last...

Sketches of life

I have had a Wacom tablet for a while now but haven't really gotten down to playing with it... till a couple of days ago. I started with rough drawings / sketches of friends and family. Take a look and let me know what you think.... You can click on the images to see...

Pi(e) day, 2019

Pi(e) day, 2019

A design created in celebration of Pi-day, 2019. (More context about the day here and more about the number itself here). As always, the OofSI team celebrates Pi(e) day by offering a selection of Pi(e)'s - exactly at 1:59 PM. Totally irrational I know! Apart from...

Chimp number sense…

A video, brought to you by Slate, titled "How smart are chimps?" I apologize in advance for the commercial at the beginning of the video.

Photography update

I have continued adding photographs from the trip to my Flickr Site... I had posted about this earlier but I guess it is time for another reminder. There are now 380 photographs on the "Travels in Asia 2008" Flickr-set (and more coming soon). Go to the...

Obtuse can be right!

My daughter, whose creative exploits have been featured here before (for instance see her design for a math-music game), now has a blog, titled Uniquely Mine. It features original writing (poems, stories) by her. Do check it out. You can find regular updates on this...

Darwin Day & A new Gallup Poll

Charles Darwin 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882 On this day, it is sobering to read the results of the latest Gallup Poll: On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in EvolutionOn the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, a new Gallup Poll shows...

Designing for Creative Learning Environments: New chapter

Designing for Creative Learning Environments: New chapter

In 2017, Carmen Richardson and I co-authored a paper (Richardson & Mishra, 2017) introducing SCALE: Support of Creativity in Learning Environment: SCALE, a tool created to evaluate how well educational settings foster student creativity. Unlike formal evaluation...

1 Comment

  1. Yalonda

    That is extraordinarily beautiful. What craftsman, I will use that when i teach pattern and rhythm in my Art II class. “Are you smarter than a fish?” what a great intro for students to see what is created in the world around us. Even the animal have a natural drive for create!

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *