Appearance of the fifteen properties

The process of formation that occurs in nature — whether it happens in microseconds or over millions of years, whether it is large or small, whether it comes from the organic or the inorganic world — is in every case smoothly structure-preserving. Each of the sequences in the last pages shows a sequence where successive stages are so alike as to be hardly distinguishable. Yet what is accomplished overall, from the beginning to the end of each sequence, is enormous. New form comes into being. Morphogenesis occurs. New form that is, in almost every case, unpredictable from the initial state appears smoothly via a sequence of tiny continuous changes.
The sequences are not merely smooth. We have, in every case, a sequence in which new structure grows organically, holistically, from the structure which is there already. One whole gives rise to another.
It is this smooth and elegant “becoming” or unfolding of the whole which is the characteristic of nature. The continuity and smoothness of unfolding wholeness may seem obvious. Indeed, in a certain sense, it is obvious, Yet, as a creative process, it is sharply at odds with the human process of creation we have come to expect in contemporary art and architecture.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/1 The principle of unfolding wholeness in nature#