ALL ART AND SCIENCE…. iterations, reiterations, repeats, mirror images, fitting things together.
Repeating designs, maybe with slight variations in size and color, is not new really, and here is an example on the brink of recorded history, the construction of the first temple, columns (jachin and boaz) with the famed two rows of pomegranates, repeating fruits, likely mirrored vertically and horizontally.
More ancient art has repeats than art created in the last few hundred years, the former comprising clustered natural objects, fruit, animals, or this and that, and patterns flowing in circular or rectangular borders, or radial distribution.
All these visual cues (and auditory, in the case of music) are samples of humans bringing “order” from what might be considered “chaos”. Even not so much order that the artwork becomes monotonous or painful, or annoying, but just enough repetition, with variation, to be soothing and stimulating at the same time, and to give us the feeling that “someone has intentionally ordered” the images or sounds. It seems that observing order has a positive influence on society at large. I don’t need to do much more than type in a google search for “effect of visual environment on social behavior” to drag up over 2,000,000 posts.
It would be fun to know how far back slightly ordered rhythm and visual stimuli can be sensed by animals (and plants). (I bet it is there from the beginning, a billion years ago — who would be surprised at that? not I).The light dark of day and night is sensed by plants and animals alike, that certainly is a reiteration. Temperature is sensed as well, that also reiterates, and has been amply programmed into our genome and epigenome. Going out on a limb here with an idea which has bounced around in my head for a long time, and that our bodies are also tied into the rhythm of food, that is, we benefit from eating only summer fruits and veggies during that season, and from winter harvested items in winter. Not just in terms of cost, or availability (because all foods are now available all year around) but because our evolution has been tied to these reiterations for millions of years. (haha… so here in the last 50 years we think it is OK to eat potatoes in summer!! watermelon in winter–we are at best–naive, at worst, obnoxiously arrogant).
Repetition, reiteration, symmetry from partial symmetry, radial symmetry from bilateral symmetry — all part of our creative spirit. And early on, i think the simple horizontal mirror, or radial spreading of an icon (coins are good example that three pomegranates, menorahs, and then there is this mosaic below which really presses radial iteration to the outer limits, ha ha). 
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I think of all the crafts, designs, and architecture which have the over-and-over-up-down-mirrored patterns… would it be cool to know what in the human mind (not even just my mind) loves the trick of horizontal and vertical mirroring, as well as repeats, splits and size variation? It is in music too! Think of how many stanzas of the same base drum rhythm can be found in a single tune. Bach was the real “reiteration, iteration” composer.
Think about Escher.. ha ha… that was pretty compulsive and highly obsessive (and I love it ha ha but would never do it)… classical block-quilting is a great example of reiteration (technically, repeating an iteration), mosaic another, so there is some hard wiring somewhere (at least in my brain) that relishes repeated visual and auditory sequences. It gives me “peace of mind”.
That said, it is clear that yoga, prayer beads, malas, rosaries, and orderly surroundings make the verbal and tactile iterations medically beneficial.