Volume II – Symetry in natural sciences
The collection of papers presented in this volume was written as a transcription of popular scientific lectures delivered in 1992 at the Studium Generale on the subject of “symmetries in nature, art, and the humanities”. The volume is an attempt to combine knowledge from seemingly unrelated fields. The unifying theme here is symmetry.
Among other things, the volume includes an article dealing with chaos, purposefulness, and order in nature. It discusses symmetry, asymmetry, antisymmetry, and “colorful” symmetry in connection with issues of crystallography. Moreover, it examines the problem of chirality of molecules and the appearance of chirality in nature, which is significantly related to the phenomenon of life. There are also articles devoted to the chirality in biomolecules and periodicity of DNA, as well as to viruses and their symmetry.
The section on symmetry in biology includes papers on plant morphogenesis, symmetry within animals, the relationship between symmetry and asymmetry in the evolution of body and shell structure in snails. One of the papers introduces the problems of asymmetry in human body structure, from both functional and evolutionary aspects.
Translated by Magdalena Mróz (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
