Heaven's Fractal Net: Retrieving Lost Visions In The Humanities [With CD]

Book Summary

"Fractal" is a term coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrotto denote the geometry of nature, which traces inherent order in chaotic shapes andprocesses. Fractal concepts are part of our emerging vocabulary and can be useful inidentifying patterns of human behavior, culture, and history, while enhancing ourunderstanding of the nature of consciousness. According to WilliamJ. Jackson, the more one studies fractals, the more apparent their connections tothe humanities become. In the recursive patterns of religious music, in templearchitecture in India, in cathedral structures in Europe and America, in the imageryof religious literature depicting infinity and abundance, and in poetic descriptionsof the nature of consciousness, fractal-like configurations are pervasive.Recognition of this structure, which is also found in social organizations andritual symbolism, requires only that one develop "an eye for fractals" bystudying the work of researchers and observing nature. One then begins to see thatthe separation of humanities and science is convenient oversimplification, not anultimate fact. Includes a DVD of animated fractals.

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