Patterns That Connect


Book Description

Travelers & scholars have long been puzzled by similarities in the arts of diverse ancient & tribal cultures. It remained for the American art historian Carl Schuster (1904-1969) to discover a set of patterns designed by ancient peoples to illustrate their ideas about kinship. Schuster succeeded in decoding this iconography, which lasted over ten thousand years, crossed continents, & outlived most of the cultures that sheltered it.




The Pattern Seekers


Book Description

A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity. Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for seventy thousand years, from the first tools to the digital revolution. How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species's inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social and often medical challenges, so Baron-Cohen calls on us to support and celebrate autistic people in both their disabilities and their triumphs. Ultimately, The Pattern Seekers isn't just a new theory of human civilization, but a call to consider anew how society treats those who think differently.




A Pattern Language


Book Description

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.




Social Chemistry


Book Description

One of 2021's Most Highly Anticipated New Books—Newsweek One of The 20 Leadership Books to Read in 2020—Adam Grant One of The Best New Wellness Books Hitting Shelves in January 2021—Shape.com A Top Business Book for January 2021—Financial Times A Next Big Idea Club Nominee Social Chemistry will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding the contours of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . . Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it's the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking. Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King's own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.




Patterns of Commoning


Book Description

What accounts for the persistence and spread of "commoning," the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? And why are so many people embracing the commons as a powerful strategy for building a fair, humane and Earth-respecting social order? In more than fifty original essays, Patterns of Commoning addresses these questions and probes the inner complexities of this timeless social paradigm. The book surveys some of the most notable, inspiring commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons - and dozens of others. David Bollier (www.bollier.org) is an American author, activist and independent scholar who has studied the commons for nearly twenty years. Silke Helfrich (commonsblog.wordpress.com) is a German author and independent activist of the commons who blogs at www.commonsblog.de, and cofounder of the Commons-Institut in Germany. With Michel Bauwens, Bollier and Helfrich are cofounders of the Common Strategies Group. For more information, go to the book's website, Patterns of Commoning (www.patternsofcommoning.org)




Art and Sustainability


Book Description

Kagan starts his analysis pointing at the Western development model and the modern worldview that lie at the heart of unsustainability. He characterizes the modern worldview as based in the classical scientific method and as atomistic, materialistic, individualistic and Eurocentric. Kagan's assumption is that in order to change our actual culture of unsustainability in a sustainable one, we will have to look for an alternative worldview and go beyond utilitarian rationality that is so very common in our contemporary cultures and in most analyses of sustainability. We will have to engage ourselves in a really fundamental rethinking of our culture and our ways of thinking, knowing and seeing ourselves and the world. With an overview of ecological art over the past 40 years and a discussion of art and social change, the book assesses the potential role of art in a much needed transformation process. Review in: International journal of cutural policy.19(2013)1(141-143).




Dynamic Patterns


Book Description

foreword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.




Connecting Pentatonic Patterns


Book Description

(Guitar Educational). If you've been finding yourself trapped in the pentatonic box, then Connecting Pentatonic Patterns is for you! This hands-on instructional book with audio offers examples for guitar players of all levels, from beginner to advanced. The only prerequisites are a basic understanding of the minor pentatonic scale and a desire to expand your fretboard horizons. Study this book faithfully, and soon you'll be soloing all over the neck with the greatest of ease. Includes audio demonstrations of every example in the book, plus jam tracks for practicing!




Designing Patterns


Book Description

This practical guide explains the ins and outs of designing patterns while the included CD features templates for experimentation by beginners and professionals alike.




Ebb and Flow


Book Description

An exploration of water's power to heal us, inspire us and offer us spiritual meaning. This is a feminist reimagining of the meaning of power through the lens of water. Easkey offers a range of wellness practices to encourage the reader to connect with water as healer, restoring a relationship of care. Our strength lies in being soft like water. This book is about the power we gain by connecting to water. It’s about how we can restore our relationship with the world's different bodies of water, and by doing so, restore both the water and ourselves. By sharing Easkey's own experiences as surfer and marine scientist, as well as those of many of her mentors who are at the forefront of water protection and activism around the world, it guides readers into reimagining the spirituality of water and restoring our innate connection with this lifeblood of the planet. The book also provides the reader with water-inspired strategies to restore calm, reduce stress and soothe anxiety. These range from simple breathing and visualization exercises to undertaking a journey from a water source to the ocean in order to forge a deep connection with the water. The emphasis is as much on the benefit to water as it is to the individual, and on creating a culture of reciprocity and care. By regaining this lost connection with water, we learn to develop an empathic connection with the force of all life and in the process restore our own hearts and minds.