Mathematicians didn't invent infinity until 1877. So they thought it was impossible that Africans could be using fractal geometry.
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Ron Eglash Quote
“The reason that Google was such a success is because they were the first ones to take advantage of the self-organizing properties of the web. It's in ecological sustainability. It's in the developmental power of entrepreneurship, the ethical power of democracy.”
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While fractal geometry is often used in high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs.
Creating a body of mathematics is about intellectual labor, not some kind of transcendental revelation. There are plenty of important components of European fractal geometry that are missing from the African version.
Fractal geometry is everywhere, even in lines drawn in the sand. It's the cycle of life... You see fractals in plants, in flowers. Within the human lung are branches within branches.
When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized 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.
I just toured around looking for fractals, and when I found something that had a scaling geometry, I would ask the folks what was going on - why they had made it that way.