The fifteen properties of life

Whole Earth, Winter, 2001 by Christopher Alexander

3. Layers of boundaries in wood tissue.

4. Mid-span wake of an airfoil.

5. Ink and gelatin.

6. Tulip tree leaf.

7. Scattering from a beryllium atom.

8. Greek fret ornament.

9. Purple emperor butterfly.

10. Cells of a honeycomb.

11. Chambered nautilus.

12. X-ray of a lily.

13. The eye of a storm.

14. A desert landscape.

15. Edge of a lake.

Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9,12, 13, 15 from The Nature of Order. Nos. 2, 11 from Peter S. Stevens, Patterns in Nature (out of print). No. 8 from Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai, Symmetry: A Unifying Concept.

Christopher Alexander was born in Vienna and educated at Cambridge University and Harvard. He is professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Since Whole Earth reviewed his Pattern Language twenty-five years ago, it has remained one of the books readers have repeatedly cited as most influential in their lives. The Phenomenon of Life is the first volume of a four-volume, 2,000-page magnum opus to be published over the next several months. See also www.patternlanguage.com for a fuller understanding of the pattern language, examples of its use, and links to Alexander's network. --MKS