Origami For Kids

It is sometimes said that the process by which an origami animal is made resembles that which real living organisms go through—that origami yields up a sort of “parallel embryology”. This is a charming metaphor, but just what does it mean, and how far can it be taken? Let’s start with one sense in which this is not an analogy at all, but a literal description. There is a key stage that all animals go through as their forms develop, that involves folding. This is the stage of gastrulation (and also the next stage after it, neurulation). That is when the embryo changes from an essentially 2D shape to an essentially 3D one. The egg has been fertilized, several cell-divisions have taken place, and now there is a fluid-filled ball (called the blastula ) of up to several thousand cells, its wall one or two cells thick. Paperfolders will recognize what next happens—invagination at a point on the sphere, then a line, and finally a circle—as a sink : material from the outside is pushed inward,...

macaques allogrooming I once suggested in jest that the reason origami is so successful in calming people and bringing out conciliatory instincts is that humans are basically primates, and a calming activity that used to take up a lot of time in our social life--allogrooming--disappeared without a trace once we lost our body hair. There’s been no good replacement ever since, and origami is the first thing in a while that even comes close. All that intense concentration and fussing with fingers in a social context over something small that needs puzzling out. --Of course no one was really meant to take this sort of idea seriously... least of all me… snagged from Dave Brill's Freising photoset . Thanks Dave!

It’s not just in the weird paperfolding that I do, but also in the most conventional sort of technical origami, that a principle of “non-interference” applies. After all, those individual toenails or flight feathers one is showing off can't be allowed to cause trouble for the rest of the bird, can they? I am something of an extremist with this principle, and often try obstinately to squeeze out as many features as possible in the middle of the sheet while leaving the edges entirely unblemished . Cheers! Confuse-ye-us

Down pending revisions (may be a while). For now, enjoy this oldie

If the Internet hasn't completely frazzled your brain and fragmented your attention-span, there’s a 100-page book, written about 100 years ago, that I’d like you to read. It is Emanuel Loewy’s “The Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art”. You can find it here . It gives a lot to think about; some of which strangely enough bears also on origami. Go ahead and read it and I’ll get back to you in a few weeks. S.