Owners, managers and staff united in love

With his concept of the Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono gave us a set of colours to make explicit a new way of coordinating our thinking to better solve problems, and Stephen Covey has given us the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Both have had an impact on business life, directing it away from capitalism "red in tooth and claw" toward, quoting Tennyson again, a way of conducting economic activity where " love [is] Creation’s final law".
However, rapidly gaining attention in the 21st Century is the way of doing business that goes under the name of the Economy of Communion.

This way of thinking is based of a schema of seven colours:
1. Red: Entrepreneurs, workers and business
The functions and the various business roles are defined with clarity and exercised with a spirit of service and responsibility. The directing style is that of participation. Business objectives are shared and adequately verified in a transparent manner, paying particular attention to the quality of relationships between all subjects involved (stakeholders).
2. Orange: Relationships with clients, suppliers, financiers, civil society and external subjects
Business members commit with professionalism to build and reinforce good and open relationships with clients, suppliers and the territorial community in which they operate, of which creating and safeguarding the betterment of all parties are felt to be integral parts of the mission.
3. Yellow: Spirituality and ethics
The work of the EoC is seen as an opportunity for growth, not only professional, but also spiritual and ethical. The business commits itself to concretely respect laws. It behaves correctly towards fiscal authorities, control bodies, unions and institutional authorities. It knows that the quality of working life is a dimension essential for a person’s growth as a human being. Those who work in EoC businesses learn to give value also to difficulties and hardships in the workplace, making them precious occasions for growth and maturity. In defining the nature and quality of its products, the business is also committed to evaluate the effects of its products on the wellbeing of consumers and the environment.

4. Green: Quality of life, happiness and relationships
One of the fundamental objectives of an EoC business is to become a community. To this end, periodical meetings are programmed to verify the quality of interpersonal relationships and to contribute in resolving situations of conflict, availing themselves of so called ‘instruments’ of communion, among which the occasional meeting between administrators and workers (at least once a year), moments of ‘fraternal correction’ between all members of the business, a time for listening, on the part of managers to dissent and suggestions. If these instruments of communion are not exercised, business life is impoverished, with a cost to economic performance.
5. Blue: Harmony in the workplace
Beauty and harmony in the workplace are the first impression of an EoC business since communion is also beauty, without need for luxury but for simplicity. Hygiene, cleanliness, and orderliness are part of the EoC culture as the harmony they bring will put people like workers, proprietors, clients and suppliers at ease.
6. Indigo: Formation, instruction, wisdom
The business will favor the creation of a climate of confidence among its members, in which it is natural to bring one’s talents, ideas and competencies to the advancement of professional growth of colleagues and for further progress of the business itself.
7. Violet: Communication
Entrepreneurs adhering to the EoC work constantly to create a climate of communication that is open and sincere, one that will favor the exchange of ideas and information at all levels of responsibility.
Excerpts from Guidelines for conducting a business

Waiting for God, no time is lost

Preface of the Mass

Christ
 the 
Light
Mass during the Night, the Nativity of the Lord

The 
Lord
 be
 with 
you. R.  And
 with
 your spirit.

Lift up 
your 
hearts.  R. We 
lift 
them 
up 
to 
the
 Lord.

Let 
us
 give 
thanks
 to 
the 
Lord
 our 
God. R. It 
is 
right 
and
 just.

It 
is 
truly 
right 
and
 just, our 
duty
 and 
our 
salvation,

always 
and everywhere 
to 
give 
You
 thanks,

Lord, holy 
Father, almighty 
and 
eternal God.

For
 in 
the 
mystery 
of 
the 
Word 
made
 flesh

new 
light 
of 
Your 
glory

has 
shone 
upon 
the 
eyes 
of
 our
 mind,

so
 that, as 
we 
recognize 
in 
Him 
God
 made visible,

we 
may 
be caught 
up 
through 
Him
 in 
love 
of 
things invisible.

And 
so, with Angels 
and 
Archangels, 

with Thrones and Dominions,

and with
 all
 the
 hosts 
and
 Powers of heaven,

we 
sing
 the 
hymn of
 Your 
glory,

as without end we acclaim:

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts,
Heaven and earth are filled with your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Go here for Preface listings and chant

I believe in one God - The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, universal and apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.
The Nicene Creed and its origins 

Common Good - The Lost Jewel

From both sides of the Atlantic, observers have commented on the results that are becoming obvious within each society of the loss of people's vision that they live in a community and accept that there are limits to the freedom of  behaviour because of their respect for others.

From the United States, Rod Dreher sadly surveys the evidence that Americans have taken personal liberty to an extreme. Hi finds this especially obvious ahead of the mid-term elections: He writes:

The general feeling seems to be that personal liberty now trumps all other issues.

Who really believes in the common good anymore? We have become an atomized nation of individual consumers who believe our preferences must be indulged no matter what. It’s true of the Right as well as the Left. The main reason it’s so hard to talk about the common good is that so few people are willing to recognize an independent authoritative standard for determining that good.

He gives examples of how no one wants to be inconvenienced, even because of their own action or decision.

Think of a liberty that you would be willing to give up for the sake of the common good. Hard to do, isn’t it? We Americans have come to think of “the common good” as “maximal individual liberty.” In fact, individual liberty is a necessary condition for achieving the common good, and for that good to have meaning (because freely chosen). But in America today, it has become our idol. It has become the end of our politics rather than a means to an end. It is so in our personal lives, so why shouldn’t it be in our public ones?

 All politics is about balancing the rights of the individual against the community. Too much collective power is oppressive; too much individual power is anarchic. In a democracy, we will always be struggling with this tension. What has changed, I think, is that we have come to a point where people no longer think of the common good. This is Dante’s great lament about Tuscany in his day: that people only thought of the good of themselves and their own party or tribe. The result was chaotic, and tore at the fabric of society. This is where we are headed.

In Britain of the 1980s,  "modernity was defined by the energy of the entrepreneurial individual, set free from the bonds of tradition or social responsibility", according to Jeremy Gilbert, who is at pains to plot of path for good governance that would counter the worsening consequences of social irresponsibility arising from the breakdown of a spirit of community.

In many places in the West, a new society is apparent, one where people are merely consumers trying to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. An effort to apply the concept of the common good will provide the needed balance in materially rich but spiritually poor societies of the First World. Further, that renewed appreciation of the fundamental principles of good governance within "advanced" sovereign states will inspire people in the rest of the world to conduct themselves as a community, rather than join the race to the bottom, which would be unrestrained freedom and total disregard of the role of government in enhancing the general welfare of all citizens.

Unimaginable Joy - Heaven

The joys of heaven are, in part, not able to be imagined because they are far, far beyond our experience. In part, also, the difficulty is that they are simply unimagined - no one yet has made the effort. But what will it mean for us to be human beings in heaven? Here is the transcript of a short talk by a theologian who is writing a book on heaven and hell. Peter Ryan S.J. identifies some elements of the existence that awaits us. However, the great love that offers us the joys of heaven demands something from us. So a lot rides on how we think of our life that will extend into a never-ending future.

God's plan is truly magnificent. Through Jesus, He calls us to cooperate with His grace, so that we will be able to enter His kingdom and enjoy unimaginable joy, for ever. He promises human fulfillment: resurrection life, fulfillment in all the human goods we naturally desire. It makes sense to understand this to include human friendship, a deep understanding of creation, human culture with music, art, and yes, even play.

God also offers us divine intimacy, intimate friendship with Father, Son and Spirit. Jesus invites us into His own divine family. Now this human in divine fulfillment is what we might call a 'package deal". God offers them together. We can't have one without the other, and to receive it we must become God-like. We can't enter His presence without cooperating with His grace, and becoming like God.

Jesus tells us how to do that [...] with His utterly radical exaltation, "Love your enemies", "Turn the other cheek", "Lend, but expect nothing back". Now, at first, this seems unreasonable. "Love your enemies?", Turn the other cheek?", "Pray for them?" But then we recall that Jesus Himself did this. He laid down His life for ... us, even while we were still sinners!

So He knows what He is talking about. He's got true credibility when He says that God is kind to the grateful and the wicked. For He is the incarnate Lord and He showed that kindness. And if we follow His example, then we will be, as He tells us, God-like, and our reward will be great. We will be, as He says, "children of the Most High", and we will be well-suited to enter into His kingdom of joy! 

Faith and Reason - Third in a Series

 Illustrations added to the enjoyment

Mr Okamoto, the insurance investigator, doesn't believe Pi Patel's account of his survival during the seven months since the shipwreck:  "For the purposes of our investigation we would like to know what really happened." Pi responds:

"I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality."

Pi obliges by giving the investigator a typical story of people treating others cruelly, culminating in murder, and mundane efforts that allowed survival. This account was accepted. As to the other account:

"In the experience of this investigator, his story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks. Very few castaways can claim to have survived as long at sea as Mr Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger."

That disbelief that the "boy" and the tiger could co-exist was the stumbling block. Mr Okamoto agrees that the story with the animals is the better story, but he cannot take it upon himself to accept it. Pi tells him, with tears:

"And so it is with God".

Postscript: I recommend these two interviews with Yann Martel, one from 2010, and the other from 2013.

Definition of Faith Part 2

Yann Martel has the Narrator of Life of Pi relate how despair was ready to pounce when the terrors of abandonment on the open sea - with the hungry tiger as his only companion - gripped his whole being. Though turning to God gave comfort, the Narrator is forced to recall: "But it was hard, oh, it was hard". Then comes another carefully considered definition of faith:

    "Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love [...]".

But it is often no easy matter committing to any of those elements of faith:

"[B]ut sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific, and I would not be able to lift it back up."

I enjoyed the next passage, which reflects how in valid religions a certain child-like outlook, and the admirable ability to submit to what is a truly higher authority, are essential to step beyond what imposes itself upon us:

At such moments I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and would say aloud: "THIS IS GOD'S HAT!"
I would pat my pants and say aloud: "THIS IS GOD'S ATTIRE!'
I would point to Richard Parker and say aloud: "THIS IS GOD'S CAT!'
I would point to the lifeboat and say aloud:"THIS IS GOD'S ARK!'
I would spread my hands wide and say aloud:"THESE ARE GOD'S WIDE ACRES!"
I would point to the sky and say aloud: "THIS IS GOD'S EAR!"
And in this way I would remind myself of creation and my place in it.

Martel also has the Narrator delve into the struggle of the person who commits through the deliberate exercise of faith to what is an evolving relationship with God :

"But God's hat was always unravelling. God's pants were falling apart. God's cat was a constant danger. God's ark was a jail. God's wide acres were slowly killing me. God's ear didn't seem to be listening."

Now comes an insightful outcome. For those willing to commit to this relationship with God through a previous choice, there is the possibility of the defeat of "blackness" and "despair" by "light" and "loving":

"Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving."

Life of Pi is a good yarn, but also quality literature in that it reveals the nature of the human heart and, as a bonus, the way what is in our heart shapes our personal decisions, and how these go on to determine our relationships and the boundaries of our spirit.

Definition of Faith Part 1

"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction" - Los Angeles Times Book Review of Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

A sequence of thoughts from that story that saves the reader from "dry, yeastless factuality"...

The Writer asks himself after one of many sessions with the Narrator: "What of God's silence?", and continues with the answer: "An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose." Is that not a definition of faith?

The Writer speaks of the effect on him of the encounters with the Narrator:

"Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably."

Ineluctable means: Unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable.

God the creator is our friend

The wonder of it all!  We see from human history that the creator of the billions of galaxies and the smallest particle of matter, or even of anti-matter, wants to be my friend - my friend!  This month I watched a reflection on that theme from Jem Sullivan. This is what she said in the video:

I have called you friends," says Jesus to his disciples in today's gospel [John 15:12-17]. Do we really believe the words of Jesus, or do these words go by us so quickly that we don't hear the divine invitation extended to us? God wants your friendship. God wants [everyone's] friendship! In fact,  the whole point of the history of salvation...from creation to redemption [Jesus' dying for us on the cross] is about God coming in search of humanity, that we might live in union, in friendship with God, and in union with one another.
God comes in search of humanity in the person of his son Jesus Christ, who reconciles us to God. When we reflect on this reality of faith, we are invited to respond to his divine invitation of friend ship in our daily lives. Today's gospel ends with Jesus' words to his disciples: "This I command you, love one another". To open our hearts to the love of God revealed in Jesus is to experience friendship with God. In the power of that divine love we are strengthened to love one another with the love that comes from God.

Il n'est pas de plus grand amour. This is the point of wonder: That the being who is creator is concerned with the fate and actions of each person, and comes in search of us individually and all of us together!

The scourge of lying and cheating in science

The trouble with science is the amount of lying and cheating of scientists, especially in reporting their work. Revelations and expressions of ethical concern are becoming frequent. A second hurdle for good science is the conceit scientists can embody with regards the importance of what they believe they know. These words are written with regret because I respect the profession, its general dedication to finding the truth, to its sense of service to humanity. Unfortunately those qualities are not universal to the extent that truth suffers, and people's welfare, even lives, are endangered.

All those general readers who enjoy reading about science, whether the likes of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, or detailed articles in the press on the latest scientific work, are left with a deep sense of gratitude for the efforts of the scientists. But that history of science also laid bare the human weaknesses scientists show in what has always been a very competitive field. Now to the present.

The Economist

From Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity (Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2013): "The demand for sexy results, combined with indifferent follow-up, means that billions of dollars in worldwide resources devoted to finding and developing remedies for the diseases that afflict us all is being thrown down a rat hole. National Institutes of Health and the rest of the scientific community are just now waking up to the realization that science has lost its way, and it may take years to get back on the right path."

From a follow-up column: More on the crisis in research: Feynman on 'cargo cult science' (Los Angeles Times, October 28, 2013):  "One suspects that [Caltech theoretical physicist Richard] Feynman, who died in 1988, would be appalled by the current standards of research publication, which critics say favor audacious claims instead of the painstaking, judicious marshaling of evidence he advocated. It's even more striking today to ponder his confidence in science's ability to weed out factitious or mistaken findings.

"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out," he told students. "Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.... And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."

And from the most exhaustive account of what's rotten in the scientific enterprise, Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting - To an alarming degree, it is not (The Economist,  October 18, 2013):
"The governments of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, spent $59 billion on biomedical research in 2012, nearly double the figure in 2000. One of the justifications for this is that basic-science results provided by governments form the basis for private drug-development work. If companies cannot rely on academic research, that reasoning breaks down. When an official at America’s National Institutes of Health reckons, despairingly, that researchers would find it hard to reproduce at least three-quarters of all published biomedical findings, the public part of the process seems to have failed."

With headlines like these, the general public will be disappointed given the prestige in which they hold the scientific community. People are also increasingly fearful of scientific manipulations, and so the multiplying calls for detailed labelling of food products. For sure, prestige is based on integrity.

Who am I to judge another person?

Pope Francis in July talking to journalists on his return
from Brazil: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has
good will, who am I to judge?"

Must we tolerate everything another person throws at us? Matthew 7:1-6 is a good place to go for an answer. There we can see from the examples Jesus offers that, first, "Do not judge" means "Do not condemn", in other words, don't be self-righteous or hypocritical, reacting to others as if we ourselves never do anything wrong. "First remove the plank from your own eye and then the speck in the other person's eye."

The second feature of Jesus' teaching is that judging, in its improper form, is a failure to be encouraging. "It does not look for or appreciate the good that a person may do. When we judge [improperly] we refuse to understand the difficulties of a situation or the struggles a person may face", as one biblical commentator put it. Often we notice a different attitude if the wrong-doer is someone we love; we are more sympathetic.

"When we have a judging spirit, we are powerless to see others change. We cannot even accurately see the problem. Criticism and self-righteousness always cloud spiritual vision. When you notice another's sin, is your goal to restore or to condemn?" 

Therefore, withholding judgement does not mean agreeing with everyone and about everything people do, but it means responding to people and actions after striving to gain the necessary insight, and in the spirit of a God who is merciful and forgiving - all the while knowing the way we judge is the way God will judge us.

Mapping the myth of over-population

Source: redditor valeriepieris

The stunning information given in the picture becomes more amazing when it is recognised that the circle contains more water than land, and within it is the world's most sparsely populated country, Mongolia. Comments on the significance of this graphic's information are made here and here.

Then at Treehugger, we have a series of illustrations with the article 'At NY City's Density, the World's Population Could Live in Texas'.

The figures in the chart are for the area of land in the state of Texas. Another 2.5 per cent of the state is water

Source: By Tim De Chant as found here

Whether the world has enough space for everyone has aroused many imaginations as to the prospect of over-population. However, we can see for ourselves that this fear should be quelled. On the other hand, though it is well recognised that the world has the ability to feed all of humanity and adequately care for all, the latent willingness to attend to the difficulties of the poorest has not been converted into worldwide action. That is the next human project, one where everyone can play a part, especially in those buying habits where cheapest equals best or high profit margins means justice has been done.

Dali and the beauty of science

Salvador Dali was thrust deep into scientific mysteries. For instance, with regards this Crucifixion, he stated:

In the first place, in 1950, I had a ‘cosmic dream’ in which I saw this image in color and which in my dream represented the ‘nucleus of the atom’. This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it ‘the very unity of the universe’, the Christ! In the second place, when thanks to the instructions of Father Bruno, a Carmelite, I saw the Christ drawn by Saint John of the Cross, I worked out geometrically a triangle and a circle, which ‘aesthetically’ summarized all my previous experiments, and I inscribed my Christ in this triangle.

Dali named his 1951 work Christ of Saint John of the Cross. The sketch below is that by St John of the Cross from the 1570s made after a mystical experience.

The effect of the bowed Christ that Dali conceptualised in a optical or scientific manner continues to have an impact on those who visit the Glasgow Art Gallery to see it. When the gallery bought the work in 1952:

It was met with considerable criticism from the art press for its price (£8,200 was considered exorbitant) as well as its quality.  It was derided as ‘skilled sensationalist trickery’ and ‘calculated melodrama’, but despite this, the people of Glasgow flocked to see the picture.  Fifty thousand visitors saw it in the first two months, and it was reported that ‘Men entering the room where the picture is hung instinctively take off their hats.  Crowds of chattering, high-spirited school children are hushed into awed silence when they see it.’  Even now, it is still the most celebrated painting in the gallery’s collection.

When it was painted, Dali explained, ‘My aesthetic ambition… was completely the opposite of all the Christs painted by most of the modern painters, who have all interpreted him in the expressionistic and contortionistic sense, thus obtaining emotion through ugliness. My principal preoccupation was that my Christ would be beautiful as the God that he is.’ 

The comment continues:

The power of the picture rests in part in the paradoxes it presents to the viewer.  The monumental figure of the crucified Christ hovers above the world, yet we look down on him.  In the detail of Christ’s body and his closeness to the picture surface – he really does appear to project beyond it – Christ is immediately and physically present and yet he is distant, above the clouds, his face hidden.

The scientific element in Dali's work is particularly clear in another striking crucifixion. Here are some worthwhile comments on this point:

By the 1950s, Dali had abandoned his atheism in favor of the religion of his birth and baptism, Catholicism. Combining this with his beliefs in so-called "nuclear mysticism" he created paintings such as the Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) [see below]. Christ is suspended on an eight sided dodecahedron - an octahedral hypercube or a cube in the fourth dimension. Dali's critics often stated that his use of these mathematical symbols as "visual opportunism" and that the artist knew nothing of the meanings and mathematical principles behind them.

However, Thomas Banchoff, a Brown University professor who did pioneering work using computer graphics to illustrate geometry beyond the third dimension in the 1970s, insists that this assumption about Dali is untrue. "Dali wanted to be treated seriously by scientists," Banchoff said of the artist. "He knew what he was talking about he was not just using the symbols." Banchoff and Dali became friends after a 1975 article in the Washington Post about Banchoff's work caught Dali's eye. Banchoff stated that Dali had specific mathematical questions and sought the professor's help to solve optical problems in some of his more extreme works.

We can't leave this topic of Dali's struggle to make us aware of beauty through science without delving into his work, Cena or The Sacrament of the Last Supper.

One commentator makes these important observations:

 Believing that the number “12” was “paranoiacly sublime,” Dali painted the backdrop as a dodecahedron – a 12-sided figure. The number 12 figures in as Christ’s 12 apostles, the 12 signs of the zodiac, the 12 months of the year, etc. Dali believed that the Communion must be symmetrical, thus giving rise to the strict symmetry of the work, with each apostle on the left a virtual mirror image of his counterpart on the right.

The overall feeling of spirituality and mysticism is achieved through the transparency of the Christ figure, appearing as if he could be rising from the sea, and of the dodecahedron. Dali’s blond, beardless and otherwise unconventional depiction of Jesus set skeptical fingers wagging when the large painting was unveiled on Easter, 1955. Some presumed – in shock, but erroneously – that Gala (his wife) posed for Christ! In fact, a male model sat for the artist.

The large male torso at the top of this canvas may be interpreted at least three ways: as the Holy Spirit; the ascension of Christ; or perhaps God the Father, watching over all, his face not to be seen.

In like manner, enjoy this last work - The Ascension. That same commentator wonders here if we are witnessing the splitting of an atom or activity of a human cell:

Dali – master of illusion and of manipulating space and time – throws us off some by the oddly juxtaposed perspectives and points of view in Ascension. The Christ figure is seen emerging either backwards or upwards – we don’t know. Meanwhile, it’s less than clear just what [the woman, perhaps mother] would be standing on in relation to the angle of the rising Christ. What’s more, we have a more normal and natural field of vision in the landscape shown at the bottom, below the large yellow circle, further confounding our perspective here.

And just what is that brilliant golden sphere? Is it a splitting atom or human cell? Is it the sun? Does it represent the circle of life? Could it be a sea urchin? What we do know is that directly behind the ascending Christ figure are the florets of a sunflower – a natural design by which Dali was intrigued, because its continuous circular pattern follows the laws of a logarithmic spiral – a naturally occurring phenomenon he also found in the horn of a rhinoceros and the morphology of a cauliflower.