Protein folding patterns can be described by two rotational angles of the secondary structure: Φ (phi) and ψ (psi). There are eight theoretically allowed rotational angles for each of the two bonding angles, but only a few of these rotational angles will be allowed because of steric hindrance (stuff getting in the way). Hence, we have a Ramachandran plot of ψ v. Φ. The plot you see above has been rendered in 3D with % incidence forming the texture.
It's uncanny how you can take numbers from an extremely small system and create a 3D graph that looks a lot like a topo map. If our ideas were like bonding angles, I wonder if there isn't a comprehensive dimensional representation out there?
There are a couple of levels of potential.
1. Does geography influence the way we think? Does the natural landscape code for truth?
2. What if contradictory ideas (paradoxes) were really just helping to establish cognitive texture: just like "impermissible" bonding angles are still necessary to form the plot diagram...
3. Trying to establish the "truth" through systematic logic would take about as long or longer as taking a 100 residue protein (a pretty small protein) -- each with 10 conformational possibilities, and testing each conformational combination once every 1.0 × 10-13 seconds: it would take 1.0 × 1077 years. (See Levinthal's Paradox). Proteins like this fold in less than 5 seconds under physiologic conditions: therefore the enzymes and chaperones mediating this process must have some shortcuts. In order to arrive at a semblance of truth, we might have to accept some shortcuts through faith.
hmmmmm.
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