From Peckham Library to the Taj Mahal, the spines of a porcupine to the money bands of City traders, the flailings of a woodlouse emerging from a burning log or the whirlpool generated spontaneously in a bathtub, the Earth is graced with a multiplicity of structures. A great many of them are transient: snowflakes melting on a pair of ski boots, or the decaying remains of a Mayan temple. Others have the capacity to persist, replicate and transform themselves, sometimes into forms quite different from those of their parent structures. We would be greatly surprised if clusters of miniature Nelson's Columns were one day to appear in Trafalgar Square, emerging from the mother column like fledgling mushrooms. We are less surprised, however, when we observe a modest stick insect replicating its structure, almost exactly, to produce a collection of tiny, near-identical young. Indeed, this is the marvel of nature, the characteristic that has, hitherto, been used to divide animate from inanimate forms.

LRB 8 March 2001 | PDF Download