Author Description

Bridging the divide between art and science, this book presents a powerful visual case for recognising the fractal character of both natural and man-made landscapes. Photographs of complex and intricate landscapes - beautifully printed in tritone - are paired and grouped to demonstrate striking similarities between the large and the small, the natural and the man-made, and between widely separated sites. These similarities are too pervasive and too consistent to be dismissed as coincidental. They are evidence of a previously unsuspected organising process, through which structure and order can spontaneously emerge from chaos - contrary to past notions of entropy. Such ideas are at the heart of the new science of Complexity, in which mankind is fundamentally re-appraising its view of Nature and the origins of life itself.