Sounds good Nancy, about setting up a skype meeting…
By the way, I just got the $2000 check and the signed contract from PUP yesterday. You too Nancy? Expect the same soon, dear oversea-ers. Stephane, did you manage to talk to the photographer?
I just updated the file BookPlanning/ChapterWorkShare.xls, trying to – somewhat arbitrarily – split the work when 2 of us had volunteered to be editor for a chapter. I put .2 to other person who had volunteered, to keep track. Of course it should be as collaborative as possible, but it’s good to have, for each chapter, one person who keeps the eye on the ball? Let me know if you agree on my choices…
As I was writing this now too long email, I wondered: should we have a different medium for these discussions? I could easily set up a blog, in which we could have these discussions, with tags to keep track of threads, and documents, pictures attached. Not harder than email, except you need to log in…
Let me know!
We need to brain storm a bit on the larger structure: it is important that there be some running themes, and stories that tie the chapters together. Here is one possibility of threads, for the phyllotaxis part:
Two modeling threads:
– the lattice centered – quasi static theory
– the incremental accretion of disks (or other geometric shapes) with local analysis of transition (zickzacklinie, fronts)
Lattice centered-quasi-static theory: the bravais introduced lattices, and the possibility of the constant divergence angle. This started a thread of research in phyllotaxis, in which lattices (and the van iterson diagram) and thus constant divergence angles played a central role: bravais, van iterson, adler, the lausanne school, stephane and Yves, atela-gole-hotton, levitov. The theory is mathematically tight but to my present sense, its quasi static approach does not lend itself well to connection with plant data: in short, convergence to lattice fixed points is much slower than the plant time scale, the divergence angles are more often than not NOT constant in plants, and lattice-centered models are not well adapted to concretely explain transitions.
Incremental accretion of disks
I would like to posit that Schwendener might be the first to have looked at disk packing see figure attached. This was right in the wake of Hofmeister (whose job he eventually took).
Interestingly, van Iterson, as re-discovered by stephane, continued that thread, giving a pictorial explanation of Fibonacci transition, using zickzacklinie – in the same paper where he developed his famous diagram. So he was a point of intersection of the 2 threads. That makes him doubly important, to my taste.
As for Adler’s criticism of Schwendener, it is about the lattice centered piece of his work, not the disk accretion…
Our recent work takes this thread back on…
The advantage to this point of view is, whereas the overall universe of patterns is much larger than that of lattices in the van iterson diagram, and thus much messier, this approach is much more adapted to the time scales of plants, with all their transitions. It might also be more pedagogical.
I am also perceiving two threads on the biology side. They are much less marked, especially the first one:
Two biological threads
– The vasculature centered view of phyllotaxis structures
– the meristem centered view.
If you accept the fact that, in many (most? Jacques, I know you had objections 🙂 “vasculated” plants, orthostichies correlate with vasculature, then you get a functionally based topological data of plant structure (namely: given any node what is the node “above”? How many nodes in between these two?). If you think about it, this was essentially shimper and braun’s approach. It yielded the phyllotaxis quotients (e.g. 8/3) description of phyllotaxis. There is a very interesting article by Okabe (Vascular phyllotaxis transition and an evolutionary mechanism of phyllotaxis), with many references (e.g. Kirchoff) which tries to tie vasculature with phyllotaxis. I think he overreaches in his claim that vasculature optimization is the evolutionary pressure that drives phyllotaxis – although it’s what Bejan (the charlatan?) also posits. Despite the overreach the vasculature-phyllotaxis view, it seems to me, has been too neglected by modelers.
– The meristem view started with Hofmeister, culminated with the auxin etc. models.
I hope this opens the discussion!
Best,
Chris
Hello again. Thanks to all for your feedback — I’m relieved that Adler took the time to write that document, and that his daughter knew where to find it among his papers.
Chris, I think a Skype meeting with Vickie would be great. Should I ask her how soon this might be possible? I know it’s hard to get much done while classes are in session, but as long as we keep things moving gently forward…..
n.
On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Christophe Gole <cgole@smith.edu> wrote:
Hi all,
That’s an interesting document… Will help us a lot if we’re to include anything about him. Which we probably should at this point. What a fluke of fate!
Maybe we could do a skype meeting with Vickie and designer? we can share screens, so they could show us what they can do, and we could show them what we’d like?
I’m sorry i’ve not been very present lately… lots on my plate…
C
On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Nancy Pick <nepick@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Phyllofriends —
In lieu of an interview with Irving Adler (which would have taken place today, if he were still alive), his daughter sent us this — seven pages describing how he became interested in phyllotaxis. Perfect!
Chris, will you have any time this fall when we could meet with Vickie to talk design? Let me know.
all my best, as ever —
Nancy
———- Forwarded message ———-
From:
Peggy Ann Adler <bxzooo@netzero.net>
Date: Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 3:13 PM
Subject: How Dad Became Interested in Phyllotaxis
To: Nancy Pick <
nepick@gmail.com>
Hi Nancy,
Lovely chatting with you a short while ago! Well here it is. All seven pages. Hope this will answer your questions as to how Dad became interested in Phyllotaxis. Looking forward to meeting you next April 27th.
P.