The fractal geometry of nature

What Hacker News says

1. mreidJul 2025
   I also had to convince my parents to buy me books about fractals. My prized possession as a 15 year old was a copy of Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature". A lot of it went over my head but it had some gorgeous colour plates and interesting sections. I still have it at home some 35 years later.

   That also inspired me to write IFS code for ferns, Sierpinski gaskets, and Menger sponges in 68k assembler (after realizing AmigaBASIC was too slow).

   Show morethread
2. spoorkJan 2023
   As a sort of new years resolution, I want to read more about current frontiers in science. But how do people find good papers to read? For textbooks I always found this easy, as there are a handful of good ones at best for somewhat niche topics and you can easily find them, often along with reviews that help to decide which one is the right choice. For papers and journals I find this significantly harder. As an example, I recently read Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature" and really enjoyed it. I am sure there are many groups researching the mathematical properties of structures found in (living) nature (think patterns in fungi growth, selfoptimization of bone structure for weight and stability, paths in ant colonies or anything else in that fashion), but I just can't find any current projects in this field. So far, I tried reading through relevant wikipedia pages, but the references there are typically quite old, looked for relevant journals but didn't know what exactly to look for and just googled a lot with very limited success. So, how do you do it? Do you have any journals for your field that you look through, and if not, how else do you find interesting research?
   Show morethread
3. bionhowardMar 2020
   causality, by judea pearl

   a pattern language, by christopher alexander

   maps of meaning, by jordan peterson

   on intelligence, by jeff hawkins

   the fractal geometry of nature, by benoit mandelbrot

   ^^^ a crash course in cognitive architecture for AI folks

   Show morethread
4. DanielleMolloyDec 2019
   I will try getting through Goodfellows ‚Deep Learning‘ book, the maths for ML book: https://mml-book.github.io/ and the classic ‚The Fractal Geometry of Nature‘.

   I’m also listening to various audiobooks, but these are much easier to get through in bulk than books I’ve actually got to sit down and read for like the above.

   thread
5. swileyOct 2019
   You should read Mandelbrot’s book “the fractal geometry of nature.” He talks quite a bit about ideas like this. It’s written with the intention that non mathematicians can read and understand the ideas too which is kind of neat.
   thread
6. jacquesmFeb 2016
   If this stuff interests you there is a nice book called the fractal geometry of nature that has some interesting techniques.

   http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fractal-Images-Heinz-Otto-Peit...

   thread