Benoit Mandelbrot is the father of fractals. A mathematician who worked for IBM, he was no doubt a very clever man.
But one of his mathematical peers disdainfully referred to Mandelbrot’s passion for fractal-study as “an artefact of your silly computer”, which stuck in my mind because it’s the kind of thing I would say.
A high-powered computer is an absolute requirement for the pursuit of fractals, and so is advanced training in mathematics. Without them all you can do is wave your arms and sputter about how amazing fractals are.
Parallel threads are microscopy and astronomy. Imagine the disgust of Europeans getting their first look at fleas and teeth-scrapings through the earliest microscopes. And the amazement of early telescopers viewing constellations invisible to the naked eye since the beginning of time.
These early instruments have no home now other than museums and curio-collections. We feel we have left fleas and dust-mites far behind, we now look into the space between molecules if we have the “right” equipment. And deeper into the dark sky.
The computer. The microscope. The telescope. And how rapidly they change. Fair to assume a critical requirement for discourse among specialists who use them is to be equally tooled-up, all on the same song-sheet, level playing-field and so on.
You’re either in, or out with advancing technology.
Doesn’t this provide fertile soil for the growth of cults? Especially when many, including myself who sign up as fractal-fans aren’t mathematicians, but have a liking for the newness, the shapes and colours and notions of labyrinth which underpin fractal-study?
But this fondness doesn’t make us scientists or fractalists.
The bona-fide study of applied fractals may indeed have great potential in issues like biology and renewable energy. Remains to be seen.
But isn’t there a limit to it all, an acceptance of where we have finally placed ourselves between the macro and micro? Between tne molecule and the galaxy?
And leave it alone?
Isn’t it good enough to recognise that our cleverest minds have struck an unmistakeable identity between the smallest particles we know and the whirling, silent universe?
Maybe not. Ancient Greece saw Pythagoras and his followers as a bunch of nutcases out there on the island of
Samos, whose only tools were lines drawn on parchment or in the sand, and their brains. No instruments at all, yet look at the influence they’ve had on the world!
In the end, how do we define a cult?
As a passion, a religion, a mania, an obsession? Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
All of the above, until proved of universal benefit to humanity?
I found this info on Google (of course) while looking up the origin of ……. Google. We were wondering if the name comes from the invitation to “go ogle”.
…….”A googol is the large number 10 to power 100, that is, the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The term was coined in 1938[1] by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta (1929–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).
Other names for googol include ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.
A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of chess game moves possible hypothetically. Edward Kasner used it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics…….. ”
Once again, I’d bet the farm that this could be demonstrated only by a powerful computer.
Why on earth, or in the cosmos, would we ever need to ” illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity”, even in mathematics?
Doesn’t that fall into a similar area-code as the Flat Earth Society, which is cult-members only?
I have no problem with either camp provided their deliberations and “findings” are funded entirely by their supporters.
And by extension, I have concerns about numerous agencies in Canada who enjoy tax-exemptions while they match many of the criteria of cults.