Fractals are still,in my opinion, mere mathematical curiosities. I have some thoughts about it; but, I'd like to keep them to myself for now, sorry. One thing that is kind of thought of already is that the computer ironically might allow humanity to deal with complexity.
Anti-scientists have long tried to deny the computer by saying it can only deal with the simple; well, fractals seem to suggest quite otherwise. Anti-scientists had likewise long argued this or that about science when science and mathematics had long ago gone far beyond. For instance, anti-scientists are still argueing about Newtonian mechanistic viewpoint of nature even when mathematical science had gone far beyond in quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity theories.
One could go much further and say the concept of god is always an effort to go beyond what humans can know; at first, everything in nature was a god; wind, water, life, sungods. Then, as mathematics started happening, they moved god to the sky and stars, then infinity(George Cantor in the 1800s found in his transfinite numbers different sized infinities; so, what size infinity is your god?), then higher dimensions, then faith and the banning of reason all together; that's what god ultimately becomes; a vague statement that can prove everything without explaining anything(Kurt Godel, in 1931 published his incompleteness theorems of symbolic logic; a finite set of axioms, if consistent, cannot prove an infinity of truths; but, if that finite set of axioms is vague and inconsistent, then it can prove an infinity of truths! God is this latter concept, a vague inconsistent concept that can prove everything without explaining anything!).
When I show my gospel of truth(first post of this blog) to god believers, they always reference 1corinthians1 which not only has Paul saying the Greeks effort to concieve of the universe is foolish, but that we should chose the weak over the wise. Ignorance is graceful for christians(and Paul, or is it Apollos?).
One should further note that the Jews and Christians banned idol worship and making pictures and sculptures of their gods; why? Because then one could point to it and say, it's just a piece of artwork. Of course, they still had to write down their ideas of god to communicate and convert others to their religon; it amounts to the same thing as making a sculpture of your god. Really, banning idol worship forfeits the arguement!(of the existence of jesus christ)
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I forgot to mention a curious analogy between Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Both chose mathematics as something of fundamental importance. Arthur C. Clarke here with his fractals show and his last novel(which I havn't read) called Fermat's last problem. With his "Against the fall of night" one could argue that he was trying to say that despite a societies best efforts to turn away from the universe, someone, somewhere, breaks free from the social bonds.
Isaac Asimov of course has his Foundation "Harry Seldon" mathematician character. Also, in his first foundation book, Isaac Asimov's characters use symbolic logic to get to grips with what a tyrant is really saying or did not say.
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