Pattern Discovery in the Crib of Procrustes

Abstract

The study of physics purports to concise descriptors or theories, good at predicting a virtually unlimited set of replicas of a phenomenon of a certain nature. The discovery of patterns or structure in discrete objects pursues a similar goal, but it departs from the inference of physical laws in so far as the ensuing generation of unlimited replicas may be a curse rather than a blessing. Decades after the facts, an engineer turned computer scientist and still struggling with his math speculates about the origins of a physicist's fascination with the essence of complexity and structure; and how they can be inferred from examples. Which led to several and still largely unanswered questions, but ultimately helped shaping many a quest for a lifetime.