Passion For Patterns

 

 

The death has just been announced of Benoit Mandelbrot, the mathematician [details here]

Like one of my other great maths heroes, Fibonacci, this man studied the relationship between mathematics and nature, and coined the word ‘fractals’

His seminal work, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, was published in 1982. In it, he argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes in fact followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape.

Cauliflowers

Seashells

Snowflakes

Ferns

The shoreline

Such amazing beauty – and there is a pattern in it. Some may talk about ‘intelligent design’ – for me it is evidence of a great Creator!

We may be able to programme computers to design such things…

…but never forget this wasn’t our idea in the first place!

listen to these verses from the book of Job

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
       Tell me, if you understand.

…Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
       Who stretched a measuring line across it?

…On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

…Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm,

…From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?

…Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?

…Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?

…Tell me, if you understand.”