Pattern Quotes (6)
I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977), Introduction, xiii.
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
The Character of Physical Law (1965), 28. Quoted in William H. Cropper, Great Physicists (2004), 397.
Such propositions are therefore called Eternal Truths, not because they are Eternal Truths, not because they are External Propositions actually formed, and antecedent to the Understanding, that at any time makes them; nor because they are imprinted on the Mind from any patterns, that are any where out of the mind, and existed before: But because, being once made, about abstract Ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again at any time, past or to come, by a Mind having those Ideas, always actually be true. For names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas, and the same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another, Propositions concerning any abstract Ideas that are once true, must needs be eternal Verities.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Edited by Peter Nidditch (1975), Book 4, Chapter 11, Section 14, 638-9.
See also: | Abstract (5) | Eternal (2) | Idea (79) | Mind (107) | Name (17) | Proposition (6) | Truth (232) | Understanding (94)
The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
Comment on Babbage's engines.
Comment on Babbage's engines.
From 'Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq.' [by I. F. Menabrea with notes by Ada Lovelace], Scientific Memoirs (1843), 3, 696.
The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being formless, to investigate the morphology of the amorphous. Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977), Introduction, xiii.
See also: | Challenge (3) | Euclid (19) | Fractal (6) | Mathematician (65) | Nature (231) | Sense (30) | Study (29) | Theory (170)
The reactions follow a pattern, which is valid for the blood of all humans... Basically, in fact, there are four different types of human blood, the so-called blood groups. The number of the groups follows from the fact that the erythrocytes evidently contain substances (iso-agglutinogens) with two different structures, of which both may be absent, or one or both present, in the erythrocytes of a person. This alone would still not explain the reactions; the active substances of the sera, the iso-agglutinins, must also be present in a specific distribution. This is actually the case, since every serum contains those agglutinins which react with the agglutinogens not present in the cells—a remarkable phenomenon, the cause of which is not yet known for certain.
'On Individual Differences in Human Blood', Nobel Lecture (11 Dec 1930). In Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1922-1941 (1965), 235.