Chapter 41

Lies, damned lies and Signor Fibonacchi:

A couple of days ago we visited Phi Phi island by speedboat to do a bit of snorkeling and generally admire what ‘they’ claim is one of the five most beautiful islands in the world. How ‘they’ quantify that I cannot imagine but yes it is beautiful even when almost submerged by the sheer mass of tourists to which, I am acutely aware, I make a significant contribution.

After a light lunch I decided that a snooze was called for. I reclined on the grass listening to the sea and the continual buzz of tourists and gazing at the sky through a richly dense-leaved palm tree.

Many years ago I trained as a physicist and still have an enduring passion for mathematics - a subject I did not excel at. Patterns fascinate me, be they mathematical sequences, disposition of stars or even the subtleties of human behaviour.

In fact over the years I have become quite expert at detecting patterns in just about every aspect of the human experience. This ability is, I think, one of the most powerful tools available for making sense of our lives and environment.

However my pattern recognition is so finely tuned that frequently I detect patterns where, in fact, no patterns exist. This can be a problem.

Signor Fibonacchi or Leonardo of Pisa, as he was known to his mates, was an Italian mathematician around the thirteenth century. He was responsible for popularising the use of Hindu-Arabic numbers (like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and not forgetting 0) in the West. This made maths a lot easier than counting in V’s and XXX’s and III's.

He also published a book which included a mathematical series which has since retained his name : The Fibonacchi Series.

This series 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55 etc. etc is obtained by adding the previous two terms each time (5+8=13, 8+13=21 etc.). He envisaged this series as being what happens when you put a pair of rabbits together and let them breed. If they mature in one month then there will still be one pair of rabbits (Fibonacchi’s second term) but in another month they will, in an ideal world have produced another pair of rabbits one male and one female so we have two pairs of rabbits. If we go on like this, allowing incest between brother and sister but drawing the line at intergenerational shennanigans then we find that the rabbit pairs multiply in a Fibonacchian way.

Subsequent mathematicians, artists, architects, botanists and psychologists have realised the power of this series and shown how it can be demonstrated to be a pretty all pervading truth. It can easily be shown to be inextricably related to the golden rectangle which is the shape that the human eye, or spirit, seems to favour over all others. It is as though there is some sort of magic which comes out of this simple series.

Of course this is exactly what I like - a pattern to which things belong.

Pick a flower. Count the petals or leaves. Guess what: time and time again the number of them is 2, 3, 5 or 8 or even 13. Q.E.D!

Well ok there are exceptions. I suppose anybody can pick a four leafed clover but the point is that they are rare. It seems ok to me that rules have exceptions and I have always been happy with the concept that “the exception proves the rule”.

A couple of years ago, in New Zealand, walking along a beach, I was idly discussing this with my son when I spotted a pretty flower. It had four petals. Ha! The exception - no problem except that the next flower I saw ,of a different species, also had four petals. A gentle unease settled upon me.

Earlier this year in Bangtao I was again demonstrating the beautiful simplicity of the Fibonacchi series in relation to nature when my friend pointed out that whenever she counted leaves they often did not correspond to Fibonacchi numbers. Huh! Women! Of course I discounted her results.

Which brings me back to my siesta on Phi Phi island. Gazing up through the palm tree the mathematician in me could not resist counting palm leaves.
Five (good), eight(good), seven (bad - one of the leaves had probably blown off), nine(nine? Count it again - huh nine), ten( what?), another ten, another nine, eleven(what is going on?).

Well after a half an hour’s counting I just couldn’t see any correlation with Fibonacchi’s numbers whatsoever. This was disconcerting.

I have thought very hard about this and the only conclusion I can come up with is this.

New Zealand and indeed Thailand are both a long long way from Europe and it’s mathematical geniuses.

I suspect that the local plants have never ever heard of Fibonacchi and his beautiful series and so in their ignorance they just have had to do the best they could. Of course shooting in the dark they were bound to make mistakes.

In this newly enlightened age I expect that they will slowly adapt until they eventually meet with European standards.