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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (37282)	9/6/1999 2:15:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 71178

I'm not sure that life is fractal in nature ... but the shared trait here is the evolution of breathtaking complexity from very simple building blocks. And a certain nonlinearity - in a linear scheme if a link breaks the chain ends. In a nonlinear scheme if a link breaks - back up a step or two and try five different combinations. The long, successful chains are the ones that stick out. Out of such dead simple input do mighty oaks grow. It is pretty cool. Awesome even.

To: Ilaine who wrote (37282)	9/6/1999 6:43:00 PM
From: PCModem	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

"I don't have good language for saying these ideas." As I explained to one of my favorite professors at University: "good language is that which communicates," which may or may not have anything to do with one's vocabulary, correct use of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Your language is good enough! The symmetry you speak of is one of patterns. It reminds me in an odd way of ancient Hebrew poetry, which rhymes ideas and thoughts instead of word sounds -- either by repeating the same idea in different words, or by contrasting ideas, etc. We are not speaking of a "mirror image" symmetry, which is made up of an original and a copy. Rather we have a symmetry which is more like a geometric progression. I think we do indeed have a similar image. Here is what you said with the dissimilar parts highlighted: "Maybe we have a similar image. Mine is that "life" was encoded, somehow, into molecules, and is constantly seeking to express itself by combining, blindly, into structures that, for the vast majority of the time, will never lead to that expression. But the very symmetry of fractals (not symmetrical as in the balance of two and two, but asymmetrical symmetry through harmonious balance) makes me wonder if life is just an example of fractals." [emphasis added] "Blindly," "never" and "just" I think life is already too unlikely to survive the deck being stacked against it even more by "blindly" and "never." (I see how you qualified the "never." BTW I'm using "life" in the broadest possible sense so that it includes inanimate objects -- The sun, Jupiter and the moon are a result of "life" even if they are not alive, in the sense I am using the word. [I realize I am probably way off base from a scientific standpoint, but this is poetry and philosophy.] The biggest difference is in "just." To me it is fractals that are an example of life {in its largest and broadest sense) rather than life being '"just" an example of fractals.' PCM