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The Question
Observations in Nature may be followed by questions like "What is this I am seeing now?", and "How is this possible? How does this work?". When I am trying to answer questions like these, I am guided by modeling and designing. In the seventies, I formulated the riddle of phyllotaxis in The Question: “How can I produce these spirals without a pencil?”.
But there is no continuous spiral at all! A plant develops different kinds of parts, and it does so within physical and chemical bounderies. I started to translate the problem into the visual language of geometry. Twenty years later, biological mechanisms were incorporated in the Stack-and-Drag Model.
Observations in Nature may be followed by questions like "What is this I am seeing now?", and "How is this possible? How does this work?". When I am trying to answer questions like these, I am guided by modeling and designing. In the seventies, I formulated the riddle of phyllotaxis in The Question: “How can I produce these spirals without a pencil?”.
But there is no continuous spiral at all! A plant develops different kinds of parts, and it does so within physical and chemical bounderies. I started to translate the problem into the visual language of geometry. Twenty years later, biological mechanisms were incorporated in the Stack-and-Drag Model.