My efforts over the years had been successful to the extent, to take an example, that fractals made many mathematicians learn a lot about physics, bi… - Benoit Mandelbrot

I claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid — a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry — Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity … The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being "formless," to investigate the morphology of the "amorphous."

The brain highlights what it imagines as patterns; it disregards contradictory information. Human nature yearns to see order and hierarchy in the world. It will invent it where it cannot find it.

"In an ever-more complex world, Mandelbrot argues, scientists need both tools: image as well as number, the geometric view as well as the analytic. The two should work together. Visual geometry is like an experienced doctor's savvy in reading a patient's complexion, charts, and X-rays. Precise analysis is like the medical test results-the raw numbers of blood pressure and chemistry. "A good doctor looks at both, the pictures and the numbers. Science needs to work that way too," he says."