Today, some reflections on form and purpose. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
Some years ago NOVA did a
wonderful episode called The Shape of
Things. It showed why the chambered nautilus
is shaped in a spiral of Archimedes. It told why
rivers carve their peculiar meandering courses. We
were given a hundred ways that nature puts spheres,
hexagons, and helixes to use.
I especially liked the part about tree branches. A
tree has to keep its leaves -- its solar collector
-- evenly spaced. This can be done in many ways: a
small plant might array each leaf on its own short
branch, all radiating from a central hub. But a
tree has far too many leaves for that. It has to
hold them all out to the sun without collapsing
under its own weight. A tree minimizes its weight
by subdividing its stem -- by splitting in two,
over and over again -- until each leaf rides at the
end of a mere twig.
Nature has all kinds of tricks up her sleeves. The
shapes of snowflakes, feathers, and wind ridges on
sand all achieve her ends with remarkable grace and
economy.
The NOVA episode ended with a natural vista opening
into a view of a city. Just when we'd been
hypnotized by splash patterns and bird skeletons --
by waves and spider webs -- we suddenly saw the
harsh lines of the human hand laid across nature's
order.
The city, of course, is also a part of nature, and
we were natures's agents in building it. Yet it
does seem to intrude on the simpler rhythms of form
outside it. We suddenly look at that city as though
we were some disembodied intelligence from another
galaxy -- never having seen earth, never having
seen a human. Divining the purpose of a house, a
highway, or a cathedral from that vantage point
would be far more difficult than understanding the
shape of a tree. We are a complex species, and the
organic forms of our cities evolve in very complex
ways.
But within the framework of its purpose, a city is
also a beautiful thing. It fulfills our own
complex, diverse, and badly understood purposes in
strange and unfathomable ways.
That's why I like Houston so much. It changes form
and shape on every street. Some unopened oyster --
some undiscovered pearl -- lurks in every byway.
Bayous and vacant lots, the Astrodome and the Opera
House, McDonald's and Maxim's, software shops and
antiques stores -- they don't all serve your
individual needs. But together they serve us all by
serving our collective, and often abstract, needs.
Few forms in nature have to fulfill such complex
purposes. It's easy enough to see beauty in a sea
shell. But you have to know a big sprawling city
before its beauty, its functions, and its stunning
range of purposes start to come clear.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
