The best thing we can do is give students the tools for constructing their own identities – powerful new tools like African fractals – and then just get out of the way. Ron Eglash Read Quote
Now in the 1980s, I happened to notice that if you look at an aerial photograph of an African village, you see fractals. And I thought, ‘This is fabulous! I wonder why?’ And of course I had to go to Africa and ask folks why. Ron Eglash Read 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. Ron Eglash Read Quote
While fractal geometry is often used in high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs. Ron Eglash Read Quote
There is no singular ‘reason’ why Africans use fractals, any more than a singular reason why Americans like rock music. Such enormous cultural practices just cover too much social terrain. Ron Eglash Read Quote
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. Ron Eglash Read Quote
My assumption was that all indigenous architecture would be more fractal. My reasoning was that all indigenous architecture tends to be organized from the bottom up. As it turns out, though, my reasoning was wrong. Ron Eglash Read Quote
Mathematicians didn’t invent infinity until 1877. So they thought it was impossible that Africans could be using fractal geometry. Ron Eglash Read Quote
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. Ron Eglash Read Quote
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. Ron Eglash Read Quote
