Pattern & Process

We have seen the light and it is fully of fractals. A seemingly random process can result in a pattern. Fractals are the fingerprints of nature. Many natural chaotic systems form fractals in the patterns that record the process. Fractals can be found either as fractal objects or as fractal patterns. Nature builds its fractals using statistical self-similarity.

The key concepts for generating a fractal pattern are iteration and recursion. In a recursive algorithm, the output of a process is fed back in. A fractal pattern remains self-similar whether you zoom in or zoom out. The basic characteristics of the pattern remain the same regardless of the scaling of the dimensions. The longer you continue the iteration process, the more intricate the tiny detail in the pattern becomes.

There are some basic laws underlying many of nature's cycles. They may not be obvious, we may not see the connections at first, but underneath it all the same patterns are running. Natural cycles create fractal patterns. Phase transition phenomenon is in a broad sense a fractal phenomenon.