FRACTALS: The Patterns of Chaos by...

FRACTALS: The Patterns of Chaos by John Briggs (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster: $20; 128 pp., illustrated, paperback original). The recently discovered class of patterns called fractals (from the Latin fractus, “broken”) are created by the unpredictable forces that operate in the natural world. The characteristics that distinguish fractals include scaling --the patterns remain complex, no matter how greatly magnified--and self-similarity : The shapes seen at one scale resemble those seen at higher and lower magnifications. In nature, fractal geometry underlies such diverse phenomena as the branching of trees and veins, the convolutions of the human brain and the shapes in eroded coast lines; in mathematics, it produces the infinite groupings of numbers that generate such dazzlingly intricate designs as the widely reproduced Mandelbrot set and the related Julia set. John Briggs offers a readily approachable introduction to this new and increasingly important field in this striking, if somewhat overproduced, volume.