V2057A@TEMPLEVM.BITNET (Juan Jose Noyles) (02/06/90)
HERE'S SOMETHING FOR ALL FRACTAL FANS!
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I'll tell you a
Yet Another (Authentic) Terrible Story,
this time exceptionally NOT about physicists.
"How Sierpinski saved the life of Benoit Mandelbrot"
(If you don't recognize the names, you should.)
Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw and passed his childhood there. His
mathematical passions and talent were discovered very soon by his
family, in particular by his uncle, a matahematician who worked in
France.
And this uncle realized one day with dismay that his nephew risks
a TERRIBLE DANGER!!!
Namely: There was in Poland a clever guy named Sierpinski, a mathe-
matician whose influence was very strong in the milieu. Old Mandelbrot
considered this influence, and in general the whole methodology of
the Sierpinski school as something extremely harmful.
And decided to protect his nephew from this evil. Had he rested in
Poland, he would probably degenerate or worse. Thus, the uncle invited
him to study in France.
The Germans came, but too late!! Ha! Ha! Mandelbrot was safe! Not only
from Sierpinski, but also from the Holocaust...
Finally Mandelbrot settled in US and invented fractals.
I met him once, during some crazy conference in Hungary.
Somebody asked him whether it was true that the human body could be
described by some fractal forms. Mandelbrot pointed at his protruding
stomach and replied that perhaps, some malformed bodies, but he, himself
is absolutely analytical, and he plans very soon to take a perfectly
smooth, regular, ideal spherical form.
After his lecture (phantastic! have you ever heard Gregorian chants
produced by a fractal generating program?)
he added during a private discussion that, according to him, one of the
most conspicuous current idiotisms is that people think that it is
enough to stick a label on something to solve THE PROBLEM.
Why it is difficult to reproduce or to model the texture of the
human skin: obvious, it is a fractal.
Why the social behaviour cannot be described mathematically?
Because the society undergoes a Permanent Phase Transition, and
this generates fractals everywhere. Plain?
Why the progress in the Theory of the Natural Language is still so
mediocre? Because the grammar, etc. are full of fractals.
So what? Well, if you are so stupid that you can't appreciate this...
And Mandelbrot added: "... and, what is really crazy, you cannot fight
against such attitudes. They put a label on YOU: an antisemite, or
a chauvinist, or... - and they have the impression that they have
explained all your public statements or your actions."
No details needed. A fractal is a fractal. Basta.
And don't try to protest. Then you are a crypto-fractal, who is trying
to hide his true fractal dimension.
Or even worse!!! You are a multi-fractal, showing different fractal
dimension in different circumstances. But they are anyway all fractal.
Next week (perhaps) I will show you a very nice example: an authentic
Terrible Story About Physicists:
"O tom, kak Sovetskaya Fizika byla Spasena".
Jurek Karczmarczuk