Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Five or Two

This recent fractal reminds me of a sand dollar. I remember reading something about a significant correlation between starfish (another animal with fivefold [pentalateral?] symmetry) and human DNA. There are many weird articles on the Internet relating to this. What if we evolved with five or ten eyes, arms, legs, etc? Would our problems be seen as a balance between five possibilities instead of right/wrong or good/bad? Would our lack of bilateral symmetry (yes Sand Dollars do have bilateral symmetry) change the idea that there are two sides to every problem? This is interestingly similar to the design of Magic the Gathering card game with its five colors.

2 comments:

Tim said...

I've never seen a fractal formula like that but I've seen something similar and very impressive by Stephen Ferguson at this place: Plum 08

It's a java applet that makes these sand dollar things that sometimes look like animal skins.

Dzeni said...

Nice Fractal. The colours are very appealing. Every so often, I get ones that look like that too. (for example, Sunday Star and Seedy)