Chapter 7: The Rhythm of Life

Nature is nothing if not rhythmic, and its rhythms are many and varied.

This chapter explains that nature is where we can define the role of mathematics in terms of producing
varying rhythms.

Mathematics mirrors everything we see, echoes everything we hear and recycles everything we
touch.

Who would have thought that nature and mathematics could be a thing? Even the way our heart
breaths it follows a pattern and the way all living things walk follows a rhythmic marker.

This chapter is compose of four salient points:

Gaits Analysis

It is a branch of mathematical biology that deals with the study of patterns of movements in
motion. It grew up around the questions, “How do animals move, and why do they move like
that? “

Muybridge founded that mathematics both a science and an art using photographs of different
phases of gait of the horse by placing a line of cameras with tripwire for the horse to trot past.
Also adopted a mechanical device known as the zoetrope to display them as “moving pictures”

This concept helps us understand the concept of emotion in animals and people, just like the
way we walk. This concept applies to our everyday life such as travelling from one place since
walking involves.

“Nature respects this unity and make good use of it”

Oscillation Concept

Oscillation Is an organizing principle behind many biological cycles in mathematics. A unit who
natural dynamic causes it to repeat the same patterns or series of behaviour over and over
again. It is a movement back and forth at a regular speed.

The simplest option is to arise mathematics in nature- to fine some series of motion that work
and repeat it perpetually.

The movements and vibration of animals or objects projects a perpetual oscillation. In contrast,
there are many oscillations that arise out of steady states as conditions change, a system that
has a steady-state may lose it and begin to wobble periodically.
“Biology hooks together huge circuits of oscillators, which interact with each other to create complex
patterns of behaviour”

Hopf Bijurcation

In 1942, Eberhard Hopf found a mathematical ondition where he proved that if the simplified
system wobbles, then also the original system. Bijurfication is a term used to described the
mental state of what is happening in the surrounding and eventually grow out from its original
form.

An example of these is the ripple on a pond originally starts from the center, and the movement
gets bigger overtime.

“Hopf Bijurification: If the simplified system passes Hopf’s mathematical test, then the real system will
begin to oscillate its own record”

Symmetry Breaking Theory or Animal and Insects Synchronization

The symmetry-breaking theory explains how animals can change gait without having a gearbox.

Example, a six-legged cockroach, in which the middle leg on one side, moves in phase with the
front and back legs on the other side, and the other three legs move together.

“Animals are very different from those that take place in populations of animal, there is an underlying
mathematical unity, and one of the messages of this chapter is that the same general mathematical
concepts can apply on many different levels and to many varying things.

“The big message I both locomotion and synchronization is that nature’s rhythms are often linked to
symmetry and that the patterns that occur can be classified mathematically by invoking the general
principles of symmetry breaking”

The nature of oscillation and Hopf bifurcation leads into a discussion of how legged-animals move,
which is staggered or syncopated oscillations, oscillations of muscles triggered by neural circuits in the
brain

Mathematics can illuminate many aspects of nature that we do not normally think of a the rhythm of life
is being mathematical.