Snowflake Seashell Star...Miracle?

Our real-life family friend Edmund, who is a mathematician and artist, recently co-created a coloring book called Snowflake Seashell Star, and gifted us with a copy for Christmas. We've been playing around with it for a couple of days, and found some great extensions to some of the math concepts introduced within it.


This Ted-ED video discusses the debate over whether mathematics were discovered or invented.  "So, is mathematics an invention or a discovery? an artificial construct or a universal truth? human product or natural--possibly divine--creation? These questions are so deep, the debate often becomes spiritual in nature."


And that video led nicely into some activities taken from the UUA's new "Miracles" curriculum, specifically session 2, which uses poet May Sarton's work to talk about looking at the natural world with close attention. "If one looks like enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place."

UU Foundations:

Unitarian Universalists take as their very first source the direct experience of mystery and wonder. UU's also find wisdom in other religions; the Islamic contribution to mathematics follows nicely from some of the above. In the past, the study of math and science was prohibited by the Catholic church. Unitarian Universalists uphold the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The knowledge that the Fibonacci sequence guides the patterns of sunflower seed heads, some spider webs, and our own bronchial tubes helps us to see even more clearly our own place on the interconnected web of all existence. 



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