Why Does This Pattern Keep Showing Up In Different Cultures Throughout History?

Back in 1973 , British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose described “ Penrose tiles , ” two shapes that can be placed together in a neverending , non - repeatingpattern . Not only did it look pretty , it challenged some of the conventional musical theme around symmetry and periodicity . It was recall to be groundbreaking – and in most respects , it was – but it transpire that gothic Islamic artists had perplex mod mathematics to the punch .

Several years ago , Harvard physicist Peter Lu was chat Uzbekistan when he came across a fifteenth - hundred CE building that was beautifully decorated with intricate tiling . In 2007 , Lu published astudythat show the normal was Penrose tiling , 500 years before Penrose .

“ We ca n’t say for sure what it mean , ” Lu separate theHarvard Gazette .

“ It could be proof of a major role of mathematics in medieval Islamic artistic production or it could have been just a way for artisans to build their art more easily . It would be incredible if it were all conjunction , though . At the very least , it shows us a civilization that we often do n’t credit enough was far more advanced than we ever thought before , ” Lu added .

The rabbit hole might go even deeper . Speaking at aTED Talkin April 2022 , Terry Moore explains how similar repeating design have end up in the creation of cultivation across the domain , from the computer architecture ofAncient Egyptand Ancient Greece , to the artworks of the Aztecs and Aboriginal Australians .

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While it ’s wrong to call all of these patternsPenrose Tiles , Moore evoke they hold stiff aesthetic similarity and ultimately hope to express the same thing : the beautiful complexness of human life and the hidden fundamental unity that underpins it .

Some might call this enshroud inherent unity “ god ” or the “ one - cape of the universe , ” while others may give it afancy scientific namelike the “ undifferentiated aesthetic continuum . ” Whatever you call it , it looks like a tone that has captured the human vision for thousands upon chiliad of years .

“ When we see these wonderful innovation created by cultures that are separated from our own by thousands of miles or thousands of year , we can know these are n’t decoration . These are statements about the fundamental values that acculturation had , ” Moore concludes .

“ They ’re a program line . They ’re a message , ” he add up .