Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: scriptingNews outline for 7/7/2000
Author: David Brown Posted: 7/7/2000; 9:22:49 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 7/7/2000 Msg #: 18367 (In response to 18362) Prev/Next: 18366 / 18368
I saw a PBS show on Mandelbrot sets and fractals, hosted by Arthur C. Clarke. I had no idea they were so beautiful and so potentially important, or even what they were. They may be even bigger than the universe. It's possible that everything's a fractal, even our brains; they may be the key to understanding DNA, and like floor wax, they can even be used to compress images on computer networks like this one (the Internet).I was first introduced to Fractals by the book that came with Apple Pascal in the early 80's. They used Fractals to teach Recursion, which is rather brilliant if you think about it, since Fractals allow you to SEE the recursion and internalize the effects.
I was introduced to Mandelbrot's work when his book originally came out. My friend Richard turned me on to the book (and to Smalltalk and Dvorak and REM and countless other things -- Richard is one of those people that raises your personal bar), and we spent hours staring at the pictures and thinking about the implications.
One evening, sitting in front of the fire, doing that "being there" thing that you can only do with deep friendships, I turned to him and said "God is a Fractal." He just smiled.
I had been contemplating Iterated Function Sets, and was amazed at how a few simple rules could turn a bunch of random numbers into a fern. If you've never looked into IFS, do it. They're fascinating. It's amazing how few rules you need to make order rise from chaos. But they have to be the right rules. There are many more combinations of rules that will have no discernable effect.
So I figured, in my overly scientific and non-religious point of view during that time of my life, that the concept of God made sense if you classified God as the set of rules that causes Order to rise out of Chaos.
Babble babble babble.
dave
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