<h1> a musing on pattern </h1>

recently i have been thinking about patterns, just, in general. their odd "existence" as
mathematics and other conceptual things, only reflecting in the ripples of the "real things"
that they directly and indirectly impact. the way they must exist in the minds of all those
who can percieve them, as patterns of wrinkles and neuron firings, whether or not that is
the entirety of their existence or a reflection of the existing pattern, whether or not the
pattern of brain wrinkles is itself a separate pattern from the wrinkled brain itself.

Stuff like that.

Today I was reading a work that brought to mind a new thought of patterns. In the interest
of rapping my book list, I'll link it, but be wary of the subject matter containing written
descriptions of gore: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/rounderhouse-bone-proposal; it's not even
remotely the main focus of the work, but it seems also a bit disingenuous not to source my
quote here. here is the line that caught my attention:

"[...]the field is littered with fallen bodies, with banners rising up periodically out of
the spread of corpses." It hadn't come to my attention before that the word "periodically"
could refer to a frequency of occurrence within space, only within time. But it makes sense.
The word "period" is used in the study of sine waves, which, while naturally occur as a
temporal-spacial phenomenon, the "period" itself is a measure of length.

Without looking into the entomology*, I wonder if maybe even the term "periodic" as referring
to time is more metaphorical, deriving from the spacial period. whether or not that is the
case isn't particularly relevant, since the order of the names we give to related phenomena
does not impact the relation they share. Whether a name means one specific thing, it's clear
in context when we refer to something by a name, we are meaning to point at a concept as
best we can, as they don't exist in a physical space where we can grab them and hold them up
to one another's face and say "here it is! This is what i mean!" im rambling

This made me consider the fact that while it can be either time or space, a period must have
a medium. a dimension. i reckoned that the same must be true for patterns, but that may not
be the case. A zero dimensional pattern, or perhaps, a single atom, a point, a constant
value. Would this be a pattern? If so, would it be non-dimensional? Here is can be easy to
fall into the same issue of definition as before, not sure what constitutes a "pattern" vs
what is just an "idea", or "concept".

is 3 a pattern? it represents the repeated succession of integers from 0 up until itself,
3 times. is that a pattern, or is it the endpoint? is it a constant? i mean, i figure, but
i'm not really sure. does that exclude it from being a pattern? a holding pattern... well,
i think that "holding pattern" has other implications but looking it up right now it might
be relevant. a very tight holding pattern that never ends, a single value held still. one
data point, separated from context of change. maybe a "trivial pattern".

Oh, even better, are all constants patterns? Or is the act of being constant itself the
pattern? Is a point participating in the pattern of "dimensionlessness"? haha its fun to
say words about things isnt it. We are all clawing for meaning and there is so much ground
to cover, so much ground to break! Happy digging everyone.

*The study of insects. Did you mean to search for <i>etymology</i>?

#pattern #math #philosophy #names #existence #asterisk