[MD] Why are things called patterns?

[craigerb at comcast.net]

[David]
> These are ideas which you communicate to me...we are talking. And we can only ever talk in ideas.
> These are ideas which you communicate to me.

This seems to be an example of the fallacy of mistaking the menu for the food.
1) Beef, chicken & fish are on the menu
2) Only words are on the menu
3) :. Beef, chicken & fish are words

or  

1) Brushing your teeth is a good idea
2) An idea is an intellectual pattern
3) :. Brushing your teeth is a (good) intellectual pattern

"The MOQ says that Quality comes first, which produces ideas, which produce what we know as matter."
[Pirsig, Lila's Child] 
"Playti have been laying eggs and suckling their young for million of years before there were
zoologists" [Pirsig, Lila's Child]

How do we reconcile these two statements?
One way would be to say that in the first quote, Pirsig is talking about matter as "theoretical entities",
such as atomic nuclei surrounded by orbiting electrons.  In the second quote, he is talking about platypi
as biological patterns, apart from any classification that zoologists assign them.
Craig