How “Pattern Books” Fueled England’s First Speculative Real Estate Market by William Baer in the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge (Feb. 17, 2003) provides an interesting peek into the recurring idea of patterns as an alternative to rules or theories.
The term “pattern books” was used generically for books covering a variety of specialized topics that were sold to the trades and the general public. These became quite popular in the seventeenth century and on into the eighteenth, and were part of a rapidly growing publishing industry. “Writings on trade, credit, agricultural improvements, and employment schemes” are examples of some economic and commercial topics covered by pattern books.
This link came from the History Of Patterns in the Portland Pattern Repository which is one of the major foci of the WikiWikiWeb which is arguably the first wiki.
The Dave Orme authored wiki page traces the application of pattern design to software design to 1987 when at OOPSLA 87 they reported on a project for Tektronix where they applied Alexander’s “pattern stuff they’d been studying.”