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The shapes of letters in all languages are derived from common forms in nature, according to a new hypothesis by Mark Changizi, a theoretical neurobiologist at the California Institute of Technology.

The idea arose from a study of how robots see the world. Robots employ object recognition technology to navigate a room by recognizing contours. A corner is seen as a "Y," for example, and a wall is recognized by the L-shape it makes where it meets the floor.

"Junctions are typically named with letters, such as 'L,' 'T,' 'Y,' 'K,' and 'X,' and that it may not be a coincidence that the shapes of these letters look like the things they really are in nature," said Changizi.

Changizi and his colleagues think letters and symbols in Chinese, Latin, Persian and 97 other writing systems that have been used through the ages have shapes that humans are good at seeing.

"So the figures we use in symbolic systems and writing systems seem to be selected because they are easy to see rather than easy to write," he concludes. "They're for the eye."

Even graphic art that is not necessarily alphabet-based conforms to the idea. "Company logos, for example, are meant to be recognized, and we found that logos have a high correlation," Changizi said.

The idea was presented in The American Naturalist magazine.