Why do things look like other things?
![Image](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1sxa199aQ8yzBmkiltEYvrVBkv1iVY5QyH_VjZlwcwarwZ3wWRMeOAsBeK9f9vqGBpE3mVJX8ILSzXcbDK4wq-LQF21pHPyjyPgzW4zkafdUS1zFk37AgOshc8gwEou58TGdJ1aufsE/s640/sym3.jpg)
Dandlion seedhead and sparkler seeds radiating from the center - sparks radiating from the center While attempting to organise my unwieldy, burgeoning collection of photographs from the patch I kept noticing something. My brain was continually making connections – "that lichen looks like cracked mud, that flock of birds resembles smoke, there's a face on that tree". Why do things in nature often look like other, completely unrelated, things in nature? The answer to this points to a regularity, order and unity in nature...and to patterns. Grain of an Oak tree and my thumb print Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form - similar patterns appear again and again in different contexts - in both living and non living things. Why is this? I think there are three overlapping kinds of explanation. 1) Laws of nature - nature has no choice – it has to obey the physical laws of the universe. So a bubble is the shape it is because surface tension pul