Nature’s Numbers by Ian

Stewart (1995)

Ian Stewart is a mathematician and prolific author, having written over 40 books on
all aspects of math’s, as well as publishing several guides to the math’s used in Terry
Pratchett’s Discworld books, writing half a dozen textbooks for students, and co-authoring a
couple of science fiction novels. Stewart writes in a marvelously clear style but, more
importantly, he is interesting: he sees the world in an interesting way, in a mathematical
way, and manages to convey the wonder and strangeness and powerful insights which seeing
the world in terms of patterns and shapes, numbers and math’s, gives you. He wants to
help us see the world as a mathematician sees it, full of clues and information which can lead
us to deeper and deeper appreciation of the patterns and harmonies all around us. It makes for
a wonderfully illuminating read.
The Natural Order- Thus Stewart begins the book by describing just some of nature’s
multitude of patterns.

 the regular movements of the stars in the night sky.

 the sixfold symmetry of snowflakes.
 the stripes of tigers and zebras.
 the recurring patterns of sand dunes and rainbows.
 the spiral of a snail’s shell.
 why nearly all flowers have petals arranged in one of the following numbers 5, 8, 13, 21,
34, 55, 89.
 the regular patterns or ‘rhythms’ made by animals scuttling, walking, flying, and
swimming.
What Mathematics is For
Mathematics is brilliant at helping us to solve puzzles. It is a systematic way of digging out
the rules and structures that lie behind some observed pattern or regularity, and then using
those rules and structures to explain what is going on.

Two of the main things that math’s are for are

1. providing the tools which let scientists understand what nature is doing

2. providing new theoretical questions for mathematicians to explore further.

What Mathematics is About
The word ‘number’ does not have any immutable, God-given meaning. Numbers are the most
prominent part of mathematics, and everyone is taught arithmetic at school, but numbers are
just one type of object that mathematics is interested in. Stewart outlines the invention of
whole numbers, and then of fractions. Sometime in the Dark Ages the invention of 0. The
invention of negative numbers, then of square roots. Irrational numbers. ‘Real’ numbers.

 Whole numbers 1, 2, 3… are known as the natural numbers.

 If you include negative whole numbers, the series is known as integers.
 Positive and negative numbers taken together are known as rational numbers.
 Then there are real numbers and complex numbers.
 But math’s is also about operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division.
 functions, also known as transformations, rules for transforming one mathematical
object into another.

The Constants of Change

Newton’s basic insight was that changes in nature can be described by mathematical
processes. two basic operations integration and differentiation mean that, given one element
force, mass, or acceleration you can work out the other two.

 Differentiation is the technique for finding rates of change.

 integration is the technique for ‘undoing’ the effect of differentiation to isolate out
the initial variables. Calculating rates of change is a crucial aspect of math’s,
engineering, cosmology, and many other areas of science.
Broken Symmetry
A symmetry of an object or system is any transformation that leaves it invariant.
There are many types of symmetry. The most important ones are reflections, rotations, and
translations.

The Rhythm of Life

The nature of oscillation and Hopf bifurcation leads into a discussion of how
animals specifically animals with legs move, which turns out to be by staggered or
syncopated oscillations, oscillations of muscles triggered by neural circuits in the brain. This
is a subject Stewart has written about elsewhere and is something of an expert on.

Seven types of quadrupedal gait are:

1. trot
2. pace
 3. bound
4. walk
5. rotary gallop
6. transverse gallop
7. canter

Do Dice Play God?

This chapter discusses Stewart's perspective on chaos theory. Chaos follows
predictable rules, but since it is so erratic, it appears random to the inexperienced eye. Chaos
is far more nuanced than behavior with few patterns. Chaos is activity that has a simple,
deterministic explanation yet appears complex and lacks pattern. Scientists in the 19th
century thought you could totally predict the outcomes if you know the initial conditions and
the laws controlling any system. In the 1970s and 1980s, it became increasingly clear that this
was erroneous. Since the original conditions can never be precisely determined, it is
impossible. Because of this, all behaviors in the real world are subject to "sensitivity to initial
conditions. “Drops, Dynamics and Daisies
Stewart gives us three examples of the way apparently ‘simple’ phenomena in nature
derive from stupefying complexity:

▪ what exactly happens when a drop of water falls off a tap

▪ computer modelling of the growth of fox and rabbit populations
▪ why petals on flowers are arranged in numbers derived from the Fibonacci sequence

Stewart ends the book with an epilogue speculating, hoping, and wishing for a new kind of
mathematics which incorporates chaos theory and the other elements he is discussed – a
theory and study of form, which takes everything we already know about mathematics and
seeks to work out how the almost incomprehensible complexity we are discovering in nature
gives rise to all the ‘simple’ patterns which we see around us. He calls it morphomatics.