Heroes Not Zombies

Whether its due to synchronicity or something about focus, attention and awareness, I find that I often have the experience that something I’ve been reading about crops up in all kinds of places. At the moment it’s pattern-spotting. In fact, this pattern-spotting theme is a fundamental one for me. I think it’s an important part of the way I work, but sometimes it just becomes a more conscious issue. Last week I had to conduct a training session for a junior doctor about consultation technique and one of the things I mentioned was how doctors are trained to spot patterns. We do that to make a diagnosis for example (“Oh, I know what this is. This is a thyroid problem”) In parallel with this I’m reading the novel “Popco” by Scarlett Thomas (and thoroughly enjoying it by the way!), and the part I’m reading just now is about the links between code-breaking, mathematics and music – the link being patterns and the ability to spot patterns. While I was driving at the weekend I caught the end of a discussion in a programme on Radio 4 about musical scales, and Pythagoras’ view of harmony. Didn’t hear enough of it to understand what it was about, but then, last night the chapter I read in the novel explained exactly the role of Pythagoras in the connection between music and mathematics (subject of another post I feel!). How strange, isn’t it?

Here’s a photo I took recently. What I noticed here was the pattern of the flowers. I thought it looked like a constellation of stars in the sky.