Lynnclaire Dennis
Lynnclaire Dennis | |
|---|---|
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| Known for | Geometry, the Mereon Matrix |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geometry, topology, whole-systems theory |
Lynnclaire Dennis is an American author and researcher known as the originator of the Mereon Matrix, a geometric and topological model based on the trefoil knot that she described following a series of near-death experiences. Working with mathematicians and scientists, she developed the model into a body of work spanning geometry, topology and whole-systems theory.
Biography
Dennis traces the origin of her later work to an experience on 15 January 1987, when a hot-air balloon in which she was travelling over the Swiss Alps ascended to a high altitude and she lost consciousness. She has described this as the first of three near-death experiences during which she perceived what she called "The Pattern," an all-connecting form of light that she understood to represent the underlying structure of life. Having no formal training in geometry, knot theory or science, she recorded the form she had perceived and subsequently sought scientific collaborators to examine it.
From the mid-1990s her descriptions of the geometry attracted the interest of scientists, and in 1995 the mathematician and knot theorist Louis H. Kauffman joined the effort as a principal investigator. Over the following decades the work grew into a collaborative research program involving mathematicians, physicists, geneticists and systems theorists.
Work
The Mereon Matrix is presented by Dennis and her collaborators as a dynamic geometric and topological system. Its central form is described as a polarised, spherical expression of the trefoil knot, the simplest non-trivial knot, situated on a torus. In the model the overall structure is a set of nested (dual) polyhedra, and the system is put forward as a framework relating fields such as geometry, physics, molecular genetics, biological evolution, learning and social organisation.
The research has been published in academic form. The Mereon Matrix: Unity, Perspective and Paradox (2013) was issued by the scientific publisher Elsevier, with Dennis as one of the editors alongside Jytte Brender McNair and Louis H. Kauffman. A later volume, The Mereon Matrix: Everything Connected through (K)nothing (2018), appeared in World Scientific's "Series on Knots and Everything." Dennis is also the author of the earlier book The Pattern (1997), an account of her experiences and the origin of the model.