Anomalies And Patterns In Lord Of The Flies

The recognition of patterns and anomalies is of great importance to make laws in some areas of knowledge, but is it the only way? Sure, some people will say that nature itself follows patterns, and, since these areas of knowledge are correlated with nature in some way, seeing patterns may be the only way to acquire knowledge. In the case of anomalies, one could say that it represents the rule which states that every rule has an exception. And while this could be applied to many of the diverse areas of knowledge we have available, we will only be analyzing this in relation to maths and the natural sciences, since the two of them can be considered the most appropriate in the study of patterns and anomalies in relation to nature. But to what

For instance, patterns in math can only be proven by mathematical induction, since even if you are able to prove something up to the 100th term of the sequence, nothing guarantees that the 101st term will also be part of the sequence, and so the method of induction is used to prove these exact patterns. But to be more direct in this, let's take a look at an example from the natural sciences: from observation, and research, we can see that the great majority of the animals in all times had some kind of symmetry, even if the reason is still disputed whether it is due to natural selection, or absence of a gene to grow symetrically1. With this you can clearly see a pattern that has been maintained over many millenias, and that will continue on with future species. But then, there are the exceptions of this rule, what we could call anomalies of the natural order: some animals, such as lobsters we can see that their claws are randomly asymmetrical to one another, while in sponges, there is no symmetry. In a way, the exceptions of this rule can be used to prove the general pattern that indeed animals are generally symmetrical. So to what extent can the existence of anomalies be used to prove the general rules in the natural

But what if the anomaly is so notable that it can establish a rule on its own? In the maths, the most notable example are the non-periodic decimals, since they never show a fixed pattern, but nonetheless some of them are of incredible importance in this field of study. If you take π (pi) for example, this number is incredibly important for geometry, and although it forms the equations for circular or spherical shapes, the number does not follow any pattern whatsoever within itself. So, how could this anomaly in the numeric scale, of which we do not even know the exact value, be so important to the study of mathematics? Simple, because although it has no pattern, it is the base to form these mathematical patterns. Taking a look at the natural sciences, specifically chemistry, the first element you see in the periodic table is the great anomaly that breaks all rules and patterns in it, except for the atomic number. By being such an anomalous element from the rest, a specific set of rules is made for it, such as the octet rule, that all elements follow, which states that atoms are stable when they have at least 8 electrons in their outermost shell, hydrogen becomes stable when he has 2 or no electrons in it, thus being a break from the rule that establishes its own rule. The fact that hydrogen, although has the same number of valence electrons (those in its