Search

By disserting on “Symmetry in Physical Laws” during one of his lectures, Richard P. Feynman asked: «Why is nature so nearly symmetrical?». He added: «No one has any idea why. The only thing we might suggest is something like this: There is a gate in Japan, a gate in Neiko, which is sometimes called by the Japanese the most beautiful gate in all Japan; it was built in a time when there was a great influence from Chinese art. This gate is very elaborate, with lots of gables and beautiful carving and lots of columns and dragon heads and princes carved into the pillars, and so on. But when one looks closely he sees that in the elaborate and complex design along one of the pillars, one of the small design elements is carved upside down; otherwise the thing is completely symmetrical. If one asks why this is, the story is that it was carved upside down so that the gods will not be jealous of the perfection of man. So they purposely put an error in there, so that the gods would not be jealous and get angry with human beings. We might like to turn the idea around and think that the true explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that God made the laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous of His perfection!». In attempting to provide an answer to the Feynman’s question, the present paper show how one inevitably incurs a paradox.

By traveling through the inner structure of biological tissues, for instance by means of a scanning or a transmission electron microscope, unexpectedly exact geometries and symmetries in the form of perfect lattices, honeycomb networks, helical macromolecules and polyhedral shapes resulting from minimal surfaces can be observed. Furthermore, by exploring cells and tissues at meso-, micro- and nano-scale levels, one discovers that self-similarity and hierarchy replicate that geometrical order and surprisingly characterize all the biological architectures, in this way de facto governing the key biomechanical functions and biochemical signaling at the basis of the life. The apparent extreme shape minimalism that nature exhibits when analyzed at sub-macroscopic level is therefore deceptive and thrilling at the same time: the geometrical neatness is indeed often counterbalanced by extremely complex functional relationships and multi-physical interactions – occurring over different spatial and time scales – which force who tries to interpret the dynamics of biological systems through mathematical models to somewhat reconsider matters that he/she previously deemed foundations, the need to respond to new fundamental questions raised by counterintuitive events and seeming paradoxes trouncing the cultural barriers that traditionally separate the disciplines and obscure the beauty.