These and similar basic shapes are still the building blocks of our thinking
Even the expressions building, building blocks and so on (e.g. building texts from sounds, signs etc.) help us imagine a certain relationship between the perceived figures. What reminds us of what? This type of relationship rarely reflects the real nature of the relation (which is generally and ultimately unknown); they are rather coincidental or conscious associations with our previous experiences. This is how the abstracted, highlighted systems, system parts and their relations—i.e. the above mentioned models—are represented in our minds.
The highlightable form of connections is the consequence-like experience of the specific figures. This is what brought us to the concepts of causality but this evolution of concepts also took long. A typical example here is the relationship between conception and birth. Science has also evolved through many theories about connections, which may now seem odd, such as the theories about burning, as we will see when discussing dissipation.
These trends and examples of abstraction are worth following when we want to build model representations of reality in physical models, cognitive structures and mathematical formulas.
As an example we mention the geometric structure of the C60 coal isotope and we refer to Escher whose art reached its peak by dealing with the complex connections between elementary figures.