The Importance Of Patterns In Literature

Humans are pattern seeking animals and we are adept at finding patterns whether they exist or not. Discuss knowledge questions raised by this idea in two areas of knowledge

The need in seeking patterns is an attribute that humans retain and have used extensively throughout the years. Thus, the urge to find patterns, whether they exist or not, is driven by the need to answering unanswered questions and finding explanations to certain situations and phenomena.

According to Michael Shermen, the human brain is a kind of pattern recognition machine that connects the dots and creates meaning out of the patterns that it sees and observes. Having knowledge, understanding and recognition of these patterns in nature, early humans have learnt and made

The interpretations and meanings given to novels written in the past may be greatly different to what the author wanted to convey, and vice versa. With our current point of view and perception we observe these dots that the author provided us with, and according to our current social standards, we connect them in a way that seems most true to us. However, the meaning brought upon by these connections is far from absolute truth and can be subjective. For instance, “the curtains were blue”, might mean that the curtains represent the author’s immense depression and lack of will to carry on. Even though this example is taken from a meme, it can prove a substantial point about patterns. The author may have simply wanted to state the description of the curtains without any further meaning to it. However, for the previous interpretation, the colour blue was associated with depression, due to a pattern created between the two. The person who made the interpretation may have been through depression and thus associated it with the colour blue – personal experience – or the colour may generally be associated with negative feelings due to a series of patterns created by others – shared patterns – or even that specific person simply perceives the colour blue to be linked with depression – patterns brought by intuition. On the contrary, in the author’s perception, the colour blue may have been a

Natural selection is simply the observation of patterns in nature and the connection of these dots and patterns to create a general theory. But sometimes these patterns are imposed by our minds. For example finding images and patterns where there are none, such as recognising familiar objects in nature or thinking that someone we saw looks similar to a close friend. In this example we connect our already existing knowledge about certain things with the observation we see and therefore create