Delany has written about the idea that "human beings have an aesthetic register" which "manifests itself as a desire to recognize patterns"
Delany 59: "pattern fascinates on its own. And three-sevenths of a pattern, or even a smaller fragment, can fascinate still more--get us really hunkering down, trying to tease out the whole of the figure in the carpet. Pattern is repetition of symmetry."
"[A]s Freud told us in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 'Repetition is desire.'"
"Classical antiquarians used to call it ex pede Herculem--from only the statue's marble foot, they would try to reconstruct the entire form of the luminous, lowering demi-god"