The meticulous tracing below of – and path curve matching to – a real Sycamore bud was made by Mr Edwards more than four decades ago.
Tutorial Material Reference (Perhaps best to start here!)
See Graham Calderwood My mugshot |
THE BUD WORKSHOP
This site is accumulating details of research |
Development of a 2-D Path Curve For topical background Lawrence Edwards' observations spanned decades, and he gave account of them in his book, The Vortex of Life, pub. Floris Books
This site may one day become fully interactive. The Proceedings of the Vortex of Life Conference can be found at |
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The projective transformation of space into itself gives rise to path curves, than which no more elementary or simple curves exist.
It was one of Lawrence Edwards' many discoveries that path curves very accurately describe the form of the buds of a comprehensive range of species. Try it for yourself on some real buds. |
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Edwards' research is the first and only one to have, from first mathematical principles, successfully described any biological form.
All other attempts at precision are essentially—and merely—statistical (norms are not principles). This implies that DNA cannot alone be the propagator of living form, and random process cannot alone drive evolution. How these things may work together is an obvious target for new research. |
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He discovered that buds change form rhythmically, and that the rhythms are those of the alignments of the Moon with Bodies of the Solar System. He found that a specific tree or flower changes the form of its buds in the rhythm of the Lunar alignment with a specific body. The Oak, for example, appears to change with Mars, the Beech with Saturn and the Birch with Venus. One of his λ* charts is reproduced above (for a Beech bud near his home in Strontian, Scotland) that clearly shows the form of a real bud undergoing about fortnightly change - that is, in the rhythm of alignment (opposition or conjunction) of the Moon with a body of the Solar System—in this case, Saturn.
Illustrating Alignment of Earth, Moon and Mars, and the corresponding change of bud form (none of it in the least to scale!)
* λ is the " Shape Parameter", controlling the "sharpness" of the bud's apex relative to the "bluntness" of the bud's base. |