Fractals Quotes - Page 2

• Fractal litigation, whereby the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world resulted in a massive compensation claim on the other.

  Steve Aylett

  Butterfly, Wings, World

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• A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Clouds, Looks, Smooth

  "A Theory of Roughness". The Edge Interview, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

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• It has been said that the three great develpments in twentieth century science are relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos. That strikes me the same as saying that the three great developments in twentith century engineering are the airplane, the computer, and the pop-top aluminum can. Chaos and fractals are not even twentieth century ideas: chaos was first observed by Poincare and fractals were familiar to Cantor a century ago, although neither man had the computer at his disposal to show the rest of the world the beauty he was seeing.

  Robert L. Devaney

  Airplane, Men, Discovery

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• I probably spend more time writing than reading science fiction. I find that science-fiction literature is so reactive to all the literature that's gone before that it's sort of like a fractal. It's gone to a level of detail that the average person could not possibly follow unless you're a fan. It iterates upon many prior generations of iterations.

  James Cameron

  Reading, Writing, Average

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

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• The first of the request prayers in the daily Amidah is a fractal. It replicates in miniature the structure of the Amidah as a whole.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Prayer, Firsts, Structure

  Jonathan Sacks, United Synagogue, The (2011). “Hebrew Daily Prayer Book”, p.32, HarperCollins UK

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• Humanity has known for a long time what fractals are. It is a very strange situation in which an idea which each time I look at all documents have deeper and deeper roots, never (how to say it), jelled.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Ideas, Roots, Long

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The simple equations that generate the convoluted Mandelbrot fractal have been called the wittiest remarks ever made.

  John Allen Paulos

  Simple, Mathematics, Made

  John Allen Paulos (2008). “Once Upon A Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic Of Stories”, p.61, Hachette UK

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• I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Two, Half, Shapes

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Past, Impossible, Chaos

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Many painters had a clear idea of what fractals are. Take a French classic painter named Poussin. Now, he painted beautiful landscapes, completely artificial ones, imaginary landscapes. And how did he choose them? Well, he had the balance of trees, of lawns, of houses in the distance. He had a balance of small objects, big objects, big trees in front and his balance of objects at every scale is what gives to Poussin a special feeling.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Beautiful, Distance, Small Objects

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Girl, Beach, Men

  Bonnie Jo Campbell (2009). “American Salvage: Stories”, p.131, Wayne State University Press

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• Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Ivory Tower, Important, Towers

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

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• Capitalism is like this fractal thing where anything that contains an element of capitalism anywhere inside it is just something that turns into capitalism. It is an incredibly defeatist attitude. If you choose to look at reality that way, I suppose you can, but you have to do enormous violence to reality to do so consistently.

  David Graeber

  Attitude, Reality, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• One of the high points of my life was when I suddenly realized that this dream I had in my late adolescence of combining pure mathematics, very pure mathematics with very hard things which had been long a nuisance to scientists and to engineers, that this combination was possible and I put together this new geometry of nature, the fractal geometry of nature.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Dream, Long, Together

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn't enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?

  Tom Lehrer

  Spiritual, Thinking, Worry

  Celebathiests.com Interview, June 1996.

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• At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.

  Louis L'Amour

  Curves, Drawing, Clue

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• I don't believe that it's inconsistent to be suspicious of people and also be totally comfortable with deploying the technology, because you know its fractal potential. It's a vote for politics. It's a vote for the will to politics. There will be people, a one percent of people, that can use this stuff effectively, develop it, implement it. That's why it's necessary. That's why civilization exists, so those few people can exercise incredible techniques.

  Cody Wilson

  Believe, Exercise, Technology

  Source: motherboard.vice.com

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• Enchanting is not the word that would immediately spring to mind when describing a play that deals with fractal geometry, iterated algorithms, chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, but it is a perfect fit for Tom Stoppard's astonishing 1993 play, which is as beautiful as it is brilliant. This is one Stoppard drama that you don't have to be Einstein to understand -- you can feel it as well as think it. (...) Breathtaking, exhilarating and deeply satisfying.

  Lyn Gardner

  Beautiful, Drama, Spring

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