Heroes Not Zombies

This is one of my most favourite patterns in nature – branching. You can see it in this plant. You can see it in a tree, both above and below ground. You can see it in river formation as small streams gather to former larger ones which then collect into rivers all the way down to the estuary where the pattern emerges again as the river approaches the sea.

You can see it in lungs. You can see it in the circulatory system of arteries and veins. You can see it in the nervous system and inside our kidneys and our liver.

It’s no wonder we use this pattern to create family trees, to classify and categorise species and families of all living creatures.

But we have to be careful with this pattern because the further out the branching structure we ponder, the further apart seem the objects of our study. We always have to zoom out and follow the paths back to the common ones to remind ourselves of the ultimate connections.

There is, in fact, nothing separate from anything else, even in a common structure like this.

But there’s a key point. We need “and not or” because we need to distinguish one from another to see every instance of uniqueness whilst also needing to see the connections and realise how much is shared.