“Mandelbrot’s insights imply that when viewed through a coarse-grained lens of varying resolution, a hidden simplicity and regularity is revealed underlying the extraordinary complexity and diversity in much of the world around us. Furthermore, the mathematics that describes self-similarity and its implicit recursive rescaling is identical to the power law scaling discussed in previous chapters. In other words, power law scaling is the mathematical expression of self-similarity and fractality. Consequently, because animals obey power law scaling both within individuals, in terms of the geometry and dynamics of their internal network structures, as well as across species, they, and therefore all of us, are living manifestations of self-similar fractals.”
“Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions of years, where men before had thought in terms of thousands; physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a microcosm in the cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible mystery in every organ, and psychology in every dream; anthropology unearth buried cities and forgotten states, history proved all history false, and painted a canvas which only a Spengler oran Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole; theology crumbled, and political theory cracked; invention complicated life and war, and economic creeds overturned governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture of the good, found its task of coordination too stupendous for its courage, ran away from all these battlefronts of truth, and hid itself in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and responsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too great for the human mind.”