pattern recognition in T. S. Eliot and Tibet and wherever you find yourself

Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.

And so forth. Quoted from two different poems of the Four Quartets, of course, and brought forth by my fresh recognition this morning of the difficulty of discerning indisputably meaningful (no matter how imperfectly perceived) patterns where reliably replicated experimentation is not really an option. Evolutionary theory would have evolved rather more slowly had Darwin not noticed odd similarities in things that weren't similar at all to most people, but he had ways of establishing statistical probabilities of actual relationships.

Whether the emergent model of the mutually dependent generation of social and biological structures in human beings is correct is quite another story.

This was further brought to mind by the three-part essay in the form of art reviews that I have been writing for artscriticatl.com on the various mandala shows at Emory University and Oglethorpe University Museum of Art...I'll not sabotage my own intent by previewing the parts of my conclusions that haven't yet been published, but the first part can be read here:

http://www.artscriticatl.com/2012/01/review-enlighten-yourself-at-mandala-sacred-circle-in-tibetan-buddhism-at-carlos-museum/