#3 Fractal Patterns
Getting some definition
Fractal patterns repeat at different scales in nature, offering a key insight into how the world works beneath the surface. Examples obvious to the naked eye (assuming that eye is connected to a functioning brain) include spiral and branch structures. The Coriolis Effect, for example, creates a spiral pattern that makes water cycle in a certain direction due to gravitational effects in the earth’s rotation. The spiraling of moving water in, say, a toilet, displays a pattern of movement seen at larger scales in tornadoes and hurricanes. The general pattern iterates in the toilet bowl and in the atmosphere. Compare hurricane cyclones to a spiral galaxy and the spiral fractal manifests universally.
Branching structures, on the other hand, are seen in trees most notably but vein and capillary networks in our bodies hold a similar pattern. River deltas and watershed systems manifest the branching fractal at a much larger scale. Family trees are also branch structures. While family trees (or our representations of language families or animal speciation) are conceptual structures, they provide a useful organizing pattern for non-material phenomena, like information. Interestingly, the organizing principles at work in bringing matter together in natural forms also function in human perception and allow us to mirror the same patterns cognitively.
Fractal patterns (and patterns more broadly) may not be observable to other animals, however—or maybe not in the same way. What scientific inquiry over hundreds of years has taught us is that the world exists along an indefinite spectrum of scales and experiences. If we could perceive the world around us at the level of an ant, for example–through its perception–we would hardly recognize that world as our own. The same can be said for any species. A bacterium, a rabbit, a bear, a shrimp, an orca, et cetera, could never know the world we see or experience, and vice versa. Furthermore, the way the world appears at the subatomic level or from a galactic perspective is something we can really only fantasize about. We are stuck at scale with human eyes. Whether or not we and other animals can see similar patterns visually or conceptually is left to speculation.
In one sense, the patterns we observe are only the ones we can see as humans or attempt to represent by instrumental proxy (microscopes, telescopes, computer models). We don’t know (yet) what patterns, what identities, what entities exist outside of human perception (and possibly within animal perception). Then again, maybe we are able to see other types of patterns, even how an animal might, but have lost the ability as modern people. Certainly, ancient and non-industrialized societies have had ways of seeing in tune to the natural world that their modern industrialized counterparts have not understood. The question of form and identity as comprehended through patterns is a philosophical question that cultures have answered differently. The plurality of perspectives in animal and human being provides justification for retooling our perspective on reality as seen and experienced in the industrialized world.
The main observation I want to make in light of all of this is to note that fractal patterns both iterate within the human mind and are identified by it in natural structures, indicating mirror processes present in nature and in mind. That said, a much greater range of perception exists to explore. This may seem obvious to the reader but it is important groundwork for supporting the more crazy ideas I will explore later on.