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In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set. This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine geometry self-similar. Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory.
One way that fractals are different from finite geometric figures is how they scale. Doubling the edge lengths of a filled polygon multiplies its area by four, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old side length) raised to the power of two (the conventional dimension of the filled polygon). Likewise, if the radius of a filled sphere is doubled, its volume scales by eight, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old radius) to the power of three (the conventional dimension of the filled sphere). However, if a fractal's one-dimensional lengths are all doubled, the spatial content of the fractal scales by a power that is not necessarily an integer and is in general greater than its conventional dimension. This power is called the fractal dimension of the geometric object, to distinguish it from the conventional dimension (which is formally called the topological dimension).
Analytically, many fractals are nowhere differentiable. An infinite fractal curve can be conceived of as winding through space differently from an ordinary line – although it is still topologically 1-dimensional, its fractal dimension indicates that it locally fills space more efficiently than an ordinary line.
Starting in the 17th century with notions of recursion, fractals have moved through increasingly rigorous mathematical treatment to the study of continuous but not differentiable functions in the 19th century by the seminal work of Bernard Bolzano, Bernhard Riemann, and Karl Weierstrass, and on to the coining of the word in the 20th century with a subsequent burgeoning of interest in fractals and computer-based modelling in the 20th century.
There is some disagreement among mathematicians about how the concept of a fractal should be formally defined. Mandelbrot himself summarized it as "beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful. That's fractals." More formally, in 1982 Mandelbrot defined fractal as follows: "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."Mandelbrot, B. B.: The Fractal Geometry of Nature. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York (1982); p. 15. Later, seeing this as too restrictive, he simplified and expanded the definition to this: "A fractal is a rough or fragmented Shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole." Still later, Mandelbrot proposed "to use fractal without a pedantic definition, to use fractal dimension as a generic term applicable to all the variants".
The consensus among mathematicians is that theoretical fractals are infinitely self-similar iteration and detailed mathematical constructs, of which many examples have been formulated and studied. Fractals are not limited to geometric patterns, but can also describe processes in time. Fractal patterns with various degrees of self-similarity have been rendered or studied in visual, physical, and aural media and found in nature, technology, art, and architecture.Ostwald, Michael J., and Vaughan, Josephine (2016) The Fractal Dimension of Architecture Birhauser, Basel. . Fractals are of particular relevance in the field of chaos theory because they show up in the geometric depictions of most chaotic processes (typically either as attractors or as boundaries between basins of attraction).
The feature of "self-similarity", for instance, is easily understood by analogy to zooming in with a lens or other device that zooms in on digital images to uncover finer, previously invisible, new structure. If this is done on fractals, however, no new detail appears; nothing changes and the same pattern repeats over and over, or for some fractals, nearly the same pattern reappears over and over. Self-similarity itself is not necessarily counter-intuitive (e.g., people have pondered self-similarity informally such as in the infinite regress in parallel mirrors or the homunculus, the little man inside the head of the little man inside the head ...). The difference for fractals is that the pattern reproduced must be detailed.
This idea of being detailed relates to another feature that can be understood without much mathematical background: Having a fractal dimension greater than its topological dimension, for instance, refers to how a fractal scales compared to how geometric shapes are usually perceived. A straight line, for instance, is conventionally understood to be one-dimensional; if such a figure is into pieces each 1/3 the length of the original, then there are always three equal pieces. A solid square is understood to be two-dimensional; if such a figure is rep-tiled into pieces each scaled down by a factor of 1/3 in both dimensions, there are a total of 32 = 9 pieces.
We see that for ordinary self-similar objects, being n-dimensional means that when it is rep-tiled into pieces each scaled down by a scale-factor of 1/ r, there are a total of r n pieces. Now, consider the Koch curve. It can be rep-tiled into four sub-copies, each scaled down by a scale-factor of 1/3. So, strictly by analogy, we can consider the "dimension" of the Koch curve as being the unique real number D that satisfies 3 D = 4. This number is called the fractal dimension of the Koch curve; it is not the conventionally perceived dimension of a curve. In general, a key property of fractals is that the fractal dimension differs from the conventionally understood dimension (formally called the topological dimension).
This also leads to understanding a third feature, that fractals as mathematical equations are "nowhere differentiable". In a concrete sense, this means fractals cannot be measured in traditional ways. To elaborate, in trying to find the length of a wavy non-fractal curve, one could find straight segments of some measuring tool small enough to lay end to end over the waves, where the pieces could get small enough to be considered to conform to the curve in the normal manner of measuring with a tape measure. But in measuring an infinitely "wiggly" fractal curve such as the Koch snowflake, one would never find a small enough straight segment to conform to the curve, because the jagged pattern would always re-appear, at arbitrarily small scales, essentially pulling a little more of the tape measure into the total length measured each time one attempted to fit it tighter and tighter to the curve. The result is that one must need infinite tape to perfectly cover the entire curve, i.e. the snowflake has an infinite perimeter.
In his writings, Leibniz used the term "fractional exponents", but lamented that "Geometry" did not yet know of them. Indeed, according to various historical accounts, after that point few mathematicians tackled the issues and the work of those who did remained obscured largely because of resistance to such unfamiliar emerging concepts, which were sometimes referred to as mathematical "monsters". Thus, it was not until two centuries had passed that on July 18, 1872 Karl Weierstrass presented the first definition of a function with a graph that would today be considered a fractal, having the non-intuitive property of being everywhere continuous but nowhere differentiable at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences.
In addition, the quotient difference becomes arbitrarily large as the summation index increases. Not long after that, in 1883, Georg Cantor, who attended lectures by Weierstrass, published examples of of the real line known as , which had unusual properties and are now recognized as fractals. Also in the last part of that century, Felix Klein and Henri Poincaré introduced a category of fractal that has come to be called "self-inverse" fractals.
One of the next milestones came in 1904, when Helge von Koch, extending ideas of Poincaré and dissatisfied with Weierstrass's abstract and analytic definition, gave a more geometric definition including hand-drawn images of a similar function, which is now called the Koch snowflake. Another milestone came a decade later in 1915, when Wacław Sierpiński constructed his famous triangle then, one year later, his carpet. By 1918, two French mathematicians, Pierre Fatou and Gaston Julia, though working independently, arrived essentially simultaneously at results describing what is now seen as fractal behaviour associated with mapping complex numbers and iterative functions and leading to further ideas about attractors and repellors (i.e., points that attract or repel other points), which have become very important in the study of fractals.
Very shortly after that work was submitted, by March 1918, Felix Hausdorff expanded the definition of "dimension", significantly for the evolution of the definition of fractals, to allow for sets to have non-integer dimensions. The idea of self-similar curves was taken further by Paul Lévy, who, in his 1938 paper Plane or Space Curves and Surfaces Consisting of Parts Similar to the Whole, described a new fractal curve, the Lévy C curve.
Different researchers have postulated that without the aid of modern computer graphics, early investigators were limited to what they could depict in manual drawings, so lacked the means to visualize the beauty and appreciate some of the implications of many of the patterns they had discovered (the Julia set, for instance, could only be visualized through a few iterations as very simple drawings). That changed, however, in the 1960s, when Benoit Mandelbrot started writing about self-similarity in papers such as How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension, which built on earlier work by Lewis Fry Richardson.
In 1975, Mandelbrot solidified hundreds of years of thought and mathematical development in coining the word "fractal" and illustrated his mathematical definition with striking computer-constructed visualizations. These images, such as of his canonical Mandelbrot set, captured the popular imagination; many of them were based on recursion, leading to the popular meaning of the term "fractal".
In 1980, Loren Carpenter gave a presentation at the SIGGRAPH where he introduced his software for generating and rendering fractally generated landscapes.
One point agreed on is that fractal patterns are characterized by fractal dimensions, but whereas these numbers quantify complexity (i.e., changing detail with changing scale), they neither uniquely describe nor specify details of how to construct particular fractal patterns. In 1975 when Mandelbrot coined the word "fractal", he did so to denote an object whose Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension is greater than its topological dimension. However, this requirement is not met by space-filling curves such as the Hilbert curve.
Because of the trouble involved in finding one definition for fractals, some argue that fractals should not be strictly defined at all. According to Falconer, fractals should be only generally characterized by a of the following features;
As a group, these criteria form guidelines for excluding certain cases, such as those that may be self-similar without having other typically fractal features. A straight line, for instance, is self-similar but not fractal because it lacks detail, and is easily described in Euclidean language without a need for recursion.
When Mandelbrot introduced the term fractal, he excluded magnification range as a defining characteristic in order to accommodate physical fractals with more limited ranges than their mathematical counterparts. B.B. Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" New York: W.H. Freeman & Company 1982
Modeled fractals may be sounds, digital images, electrochemical patterns, , etc. Fractal patterns have been reconstructed in physical 3-dimensional space and virtually, often called "in silico" modeling. Models of fractals are generally created using fractal-generating software that implements techniques such as those outlined above. As one illustration, trees, ferns, cells of the nervous system, blood and lung vasculature, and other branching patterns in nature can be modeled on a computer by using recursive and L-systems techniques.
The recursive nature of some patterns is obvious in certain examples—a branch from a tree or a frond from a fern is a miniature replica of the whole: not identical, but similar in nature. Similarly, random fractals have been used to describe/create many highly irregular real-world objects, such as coastlines and mountains. A limitation of modeling fractals is that resemblance of a fractal model to a natural phenomenon does not prove that the phenomenon being modeled is formed by a process similar to the modeling algorithms.
Multiple subcellular structures also are found to assemble into fractals. Diego Krapf has shown that through branching processes the actin filaments in human cells assemble into fractal patterns. Similarly Matthias Weiss showed that the endoplasmic reticulum displays fractal features. The current understanding is that fractals are ubiquitous in cell biology, from , to , to whole cells.
Since 1999 numerous scientific groups have performed fractal analysis on over 50 paintings created by Jackson Pollock by pouring paint directly onto horizontal canvasses, see for example.Taylor, Richard P., Adam P. Micolich, and David Jonas. "Fractal Analysis of Pollock's Drip Paintings." Nature 399.6735 (1999): 422. Print.J.R. Mureika, C.C. Dyer, G.C. Cupchik, “Multifractal Structure in Nonrepresentational Art”, Physical Review E, vol. 72, 046101-1-15 (2005).C. Redies, J. Hasenstein and J. Denzler, “Fractal-Like Image Statistics in Visual Art: Similar to Natural Scenes”, Spatial Vision, vol. 21, 137-148 (2007).S. Lee, S. Olsen and B. Gooch, “Simulating and Analyzing Jackson Pollock’s Paintings” Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, vol.1, 73-83 (2007).J. Alvarez-Ramirez, C. Ibarra-Valdez, E. Rodriguez and L. Dagdug, “1/f-Noise Structure in Pollock’s Drip Paintings”, Physica A, vol. 387, 281-295 (2008).D.J. Graham and D.J. Field, “Variations in Intensity for Representative and Abstract Art, and for Art from Eastern and Western Hemispheres” Perception, vol. 37, 1341-1352 (2008).J. Alvarez-Ramirez, J. C. Echeverria, E. Rodriguez “Performance of a High-Dimensional R/S Analysis Method for Hurst Exponent Estimation” Physica A, vol. 387, 6452-6462 (2008).J. Coddington, J. Elton, D. Rockmore and Y. Wang, “Multi-fractal Analysis and Authentication of Jackson Pollock Paintings”, Proceedings SPIE, vol. 6810, 68100F 1-12 (2008).M. Al-Ayyoub, M. T. Irfan and D.G. Stork, “Boosting Multi-Feature Visual Texture Classifiers for the Authentification of Jackson Pollock’s Drip Paintings”, SPIE proceedings on Computer Vision and Image Analysis of Art II, vol. 7869, 78690H (2009).J.R. Mureika and R.P. Taylor, “The Abstract Expressionists and Les Automatistes: multi-fractal depth”, Signal Processing, vol. 93 573 (2013).R.P. Taylor et al, “Authenticating Pollock Paintings Using Fractal Geometry”, Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 28, 695-702 (2005).K Zheng et al Vis Comput. DOI 10.1007/s00371-014-0985-7E De la Calleja et al Annals of Physics, Vol. 371, 313 (2016) In 2015, fractal analysis was used to achieve a 93% success rate in distinguishing real from imitation Pollocks. A 2024 study used an artificial intelligence technique based on fractals to achieve a 99% success rate. J.H. Smith, C. Holt, N.H. Smith, R.P. Taylor “Using Machine Learning to Distinguish Between Authentic and Imitation Jackson Pollock Poured Paintings: A Tile Driven Approach to Computeraon”, "n anOl ne" vol. 19, e0302962 (2024)
Decalcomania, a technique used by artists such as Max Ernst, can produce fractal-like patterns.Frame, Michael; and Mandelbrot, Benoît B.; A Panorama of Fractals and Their Uses It involves pressing paint between two surfaces and pulling them apart.
Cyberneticist Ron Eglash has suggested that fractal geometry and mathematics are prevalent in African art, games, divination, trade, and architecture. Circular houses appear in circles of circles, rectangular houses in rectangles of rectangles, and so on. Such scaling patterns can also be found in African textiles, sculpture, and even cornrow hairstyles. Hokky Situngkir also suggested the similar properties in Indonesian traditional art, batik, and ornaments found in traditional houses.Situngkir, Hokky; Dahlan, Rolan (2009). Fisika batik: implementasi kreatif melalui sifat fraktal pada batik secara komputasional. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Ethnomathematician Ron Eglash has discussed the planned layout of Benin city using fractals as the basis, not only in the city itself and the villages but even in the rooms of houses. He commented that "When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."Koutonin, Mawuna (March 18, 2016). "Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without trace". Retrieved April 2, 2018.
In a 1996 interview with Michael Silverblatt, David Foster Wallace explained that the structure of the first draft of Infinite Jest he gave to his editor Michael Pietsch was inspired by fractals, specifically the Sierpinski triangle (a.k.a. Sierpinski gasket), but that the edited novel is "more like a lopsided Sierpinsky Gasket".
Some works by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, such as Circle Limit III, contain shapes repeated to infinity that become smaller and smaller as they get near to the edges, in a pattern that would always look the same if zoomed in.
Biophilic fractals are patterns designed to induce the health and well-being benefits associated with exposure to nature's scenery. These include stress-reduction and enhanced cognitive capacity. Designers and architects incorporate biophilic fractals into the built environment to counter the fact that people spend 92% of their time indoors and away from nature's scenery. The Fractal Chapel designed by INNOCAD architecture in the state hospital in Graz, Austria, is a prominent example and recipient of the 2025 IIDA (International Interior Design Association) Best of Competition Award.
Humans appear to be especially well-adapted to processing fractal patterns with fractal dimension between 1.3 and 1.5. R.P. Taylor, “The Potential of Biophilic Fractal Designs to Promote Health and Performance: A Review of Experiments and Applications” Journal of Sustainability: Special edition "Architecture and Salutogenesis: Beyond Indoor Environmental Quality" vol. 13, 823 (2021) When humans view fractal patterns with fractal dimensions in this range, these fractals reduce physiological stress and boost cognitive abilities.
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