Saupe, Dietmar
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Lim and Self-Similarity
2004, Peitgen, Heinz-Otto, Jürgens, Hartmut, Saupe, Dietmar
Dyson is referring to mathematicians, like G. Cantor, D. Hilbert, and W. Sierpinski, who have been justly credited with having helped to lead mathematics out of its crisis at the turn of the century by building marvelous abstract foundations on which modern mathematics can now flourish safely. Without question, mathematics has changed during this century. What we see is an ever-increasing dominance of the algebraic approach over the geometric. In their striving for absolute truth, mathematicians have developed new standards for determining the validity of mathematical arguments. In the process, many of the previously accepted methods have been abandoned as inappropriate. Geometric or visual arguments were increasingly forced out. While Newton’s Principia Mathematica, laying the fundamentals of modern mathematics, still made use of the strength of visual arguments, the new objectivity seems to require a dismissal of this approach. From this point of view, it is ironic that some of the constructions which Cantor, Hilbert, Sierpinski and others created to perfect their extremely abstract foundations simultaneously hold the clues to understanding the patterns of nature in a visual sense. The Cantor set, Hilbert curve, and Sierpinski gasket all give testimony to the delicacy and problems of modern set theory and at the same time, as Mandelbrot has taught us, are perfect models for the complexity of nature.
Pascal’s Triangle : Cellular Automata and Attractors
2004, Peitgen, Heinz-Otto, Jürgens, Hartmut, Saupe, Dietmar
Being introduced to the Pascal triangle for the first time, one might think that this mathematical object was a rather innocent one. Surprisingly it has attracted the attention of innumerable scientists and amateur scientists over many centuries. One of the earliest mentions (long before Pascal’s name became associated with it) is in a Chinese document from around 1303.1 Boris A. Bondarenko,2 in his beautiful recently published book, counts several hundred publications which have been devoted to the Pascal triangle and related problems just over the last two hundred years. Prominent mathematicians as well as popular science writers such as Ian Stewart,3 Evgeni B. Dynkin and Wladimir A. Uspenski,4 and Stephen Wolfram5 have devoted articles to the marvelous relationship between elementary number theory and the geometrical patterns found in the Pascal triangle. In chapter 2 we introduced one example: the relation between the Pascal triangle and the Sierpinski gasket.
Introduction : Causality Principle, Deterministic Laws and Chaos
2004, Peitgen, Heinz-Otto, Jürgens, Hartmut, Saupe, Dietmar
For many, chaos theory already belongs to the greatest achievements in the natural sciences in this century. Indeed, it can be claimed that very few developments in natural science have awakened so much public interest. Here and there, we even hear of changing images of reality or of a revolution in the natural sciences.