Ron Eglash Quotes

You existed. You existed now as a fractal. Definition: A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal. Maybe we were all fractals.

The universe is fractal. The closer you look at it, the more interesting it becomes.

And so from that, I've always been fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity.

An exquisitely complex shape now known as the Mandlebrot set has been called the most complex object in mathematics.

A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.

There are only patterns. Patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns, patterns hidden by patterns, patterns within patterns.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

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.

Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.

From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.

When people ask me what's my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.

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.

If you look at a shape like a straight line, what's remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same; it is a straight line.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

I got good grades in math, but I never really enjoyed it. My favorite part of math was algebra, but geometry was the worst.

Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.

I make fractals. They're like mathematical pictures. My stepdad is actually a rocket scientist, so in his free time, he gave me a fractal program for fun. He showed me how to use it when I was about nine or 10, and I made thousands of fractals.

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?

Approach nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone ...

The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms - evolution, fractals, organic growth, art - derives from their irreducibility.

I used to make polyhedra with my father. There were no clear lines between games and toys for children and his professional work.

Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

The centre of gravity of any parallelogram lies on the straight line joining the middle points of opposite sides.

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.