The Fractal Nature of Everything

Looking at things we didn’t see, imagining things we can’t see: those things that are intermediated, whether it’s the microscope, the copy machine, the fax, the scanner, the digital camera; and so many other means of reproduction in the current golden age of technology. Everything old is new again as the ideas of the past are updated for the present day, in new combinations, permutations, and other manglings as the day demands.

A model of an atom can be likened to a solar system; a single grain of sand can be a monolith; and no matter how much you increase or decrease; zoom in or zoom out; magnify and shrink; there you are, at the same place. Only the details are different and the powers of ten are sounding a different note, high or low, as the case may be.

Line, tone, composition, color, form, idea, title, concept, project, grand schema: each note on the scale of one imaginary spectrum, everything important; nothing important. Each possibility is possible simultaneously; and beyond mere dualities or dichotomies there are, yes, trichotomies and an infinite number of further possibilities.

Each possibility exists or doesn’t exist, according to how you fit yourself into this collection of interlocking spheres, Venn Diagrams, sets, databases, or other ways of finding connectivity in the facts, non-facts; and pure speculation, balderdash, wit, witlessness; and other modes of amusement and sorrow.

This situation is of course absurd, but considering daily reality, or its virtual counterparts, what really is real or fake? Is it live, or is it Memorex? Normally, I frown on the principle of free advertising; but in this case, the brand is dead and buried; tapes live on, but only precariously. Keep looking.

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4 Responses to The Fractal Nature of Everything

  1. Well said. The common denominator of all things is that everything else around them (the environment) is acting upon them in very much the same way.

  2. Paul Bartrum says:

    Your reasoning seems hollow: the planetary model of the atom has been discounted for eighty years now and a grain of sand looks doesn’t really look like a monolith (at least IMO). In fact, because the strangeness of quantum physics (tunnelling, etc) only applies at very small scales, it seems to me that there is a fundamental dichotomy between small and large – the opposite of what you would expect if reality was fractal.

    • Neil says:

      The authors reasoning is no less hollow than your own. Yours seems to be based on what I reckon are probably un-validated assumptions, like if someone discountes a relationship or theory, and you happen to agree with that conclusion then that must equal truth and that you should close your mind to other equally valid possibilities! & perspctives. I for one clearly percieve a relationship between planet & atom, cell & organ and many other aspects and levels of our inner and outer environment. If you examine what the author is saying from a fractal rather than a the more limited dualistic point of view you might just feel what he is saying rather than only rationalising it. You also say that in “fact” quantum strangeness only occurs on very small scales but tunneling is only one example of quantum strangeness or effects, why do you diconnect tunneling from any larger scale phenomina that might depend upon it for it’s existence, as I am fairly certain there must be many both direct and indirect.

      But then I am no expert like you and I only have my intuitive sense to guide me to greater knowledge and understanding

      Yours

      Neil.

  3. 211 says:

    Everything i can imagine is somehow related. More or less, everything is related on some level of abstract. I can think about repetitive patterns in leaves on trees, about human body that is formed by similar looking cells, about human brain that is formed by similar looking shapes, about sound i am hearing that is formed by similar looking waves, even about human thinking. How do we proceed information? When we think about problems, we decompose these problems to smaller ones, more concrete ones, the ones with less level of abstraction. We solve these problems at certain level of understanding and claims that we understand more abstract problems using knowledge from less abstract problems.

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