2023-06-07 “First Kepler Moment"

"TAKE THIS REPRINT. That's the kind of silly stuff only you can like."

  These words of Uncle Stolem--ending a visit--opened a door. The words in this reprint first seemed narrow and undistinguished, then profoundly flawed. But I figured out how to correct this flaw and--endless surprise--in the hour that followed experienced my first Kepler moment. [1]

I allowed my finger to be touched by a complicated set of gears that soon grabbed my body--and never let go. In a different analogy: I found myself in the position of that child in a story who noticed a bit of string and--out of curiosity--pulled on it to discover that it was just the tip of a very long and increasingly thick string...and kept bringing out wonders beyond reckoning. [1]

Oddly but almost ineluctably, that string, that reprint, ended up directing me to some of the main themes of my scientific life: unevenness, inequality, roughness, and the concept of (as well as the word) fractality. On many occasions, I was to feel that the topic was nearly exhausted, that little else remained to be said--but it kept reappearing from a totally unexpected direction. [1]

Reference:

[1]THE FRACTALIST -- Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

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