[MD] now it comes

[Krimel]

Marsha:
Just for the record, is a pattern a definition, or compilation of 
definitions, or something else?   

[Krimel]
Bertrand Russell once claimed that the only label he had ever applied to
himself was "philosophical atomist". He thought that philosophers argued
about the meaning of terms until they got to a point where argument could
not provide an answer. The points that elude definition and agreement are
philosophical atoms.

I think that "pattern" is an "atom" for you the way I fear "meaning" is an
atom for me. It is a concept so fundamental it becomes one of those
transparent assumptions that we live by but can't adequately account for.

In my world "pattern," of necessity, involves some kind of persistent
temporal relationship. At pattern can be "constant" in time, like celestial
orbits, or repeated in time like thunder storms, or replicated or iterated
in time, like DNA.

Psychologically speaking, (what else did you expect?) life is a system of
pattern recognition. All life proceeds by using patterns to maximize
meaning. All living things in some sense are engines of pattern recognition.
We are designed to know good from bad and how to approach or avoid.

It is that fundamental, irreducible, philosophical atom: the valence of plus
and minus, good and bad; that drive life and the evolution of life.

Pattern recognition, the ability to detect similarity are well as
difference, allows us to reduce the uncertainty of DQ and create meaning or
SQ.