The Faces of a Fractal
The Imageboard of discussion produces interesting gems. I will highlight this one, presenting various ways in which the ‘dragon curve’ fractal can be produced. Fractal are an important part of Dimensional Analysis. The tool… instrument… mental model… of Dimensional Analysis has seen a great rise in past century, where-before we saw such analysis limited to:
- mosaic patterns
- very-specific fluid dynamic scenarios
Further exploration of dimensional analysis was perhaps limited by the computational tools of the day. I think, even today, pattern-matching algorithms are weakly-sufficient to allow a deep search of our visual field. The high-profile work of Richard Taylor revealed dimensional analysis to the lay-public (even though it did not reinvent arts authentication against the will of appraisers). We are seeing this approach emerge, and redefine ‘holistic,’ in ecosystem studies. ‘Scale laws,’ as they are come to be called, will probably reinvent the science of the sciences. I have written about a related topic, which despite the article’s serious scientific tone, I will figuratively call the ‘metabolism of consciousness within physical reality’
