The Nature of Order

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
What is Order?
What is order? We know that everything in the world around us is governed
by an immense orderliness. We experience order every time we take a walk.
The grass, the sky, the leaves on the trees, the flowing water in the river, the
windows in the houses along the street—all of it is immensely orderly. It is
this order which makes us gasp when we take our walk. It is the changing
arrangement of the sky, the clouds, the flowers, leaves, the faces round about
us, the order, the dazzling geometrical coherence, together with its meaning
in our minds. But this geometry which means so much, which makes us feel
the presence of order so clearly—we do not have a language for it.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
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