Fractal art is very rich, complex and beautiful (see cover). But these haunting pictures, generated by formulae and computers, show a striking similarity to the psychedelic art of the 1960s. That was inspired by psychedelic drugs. Research has shown that these drugs act as amplifiers, or catalysts, of inherent mental processes. It would seem therefore that the fractal patterns that are such a striking characteristic of psychdelic experience must, somehow, be embedded in the brain.

But today, you don't need such drugs for all this, you just need a computer.

A dynamic web of relationships

While "dynamism" and "interconnectedness" are rapidly gaining ground in modern physics and mathematics, a look into the past will show that both India and China were aware of these concepts thousands of years ago.

"The more one studies the religious and philosophical texts of the Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists, the more it becomes apparent that in all of them the world is conceived in terms of movement, flow and change. This dynamic quality of Eastern philosophy seems to be one of its most important features. The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves, grows and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has come to conceive of the universe as such a web of relations, and, like Eastern mysticism; has recognized that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles, and is even more essential in relativity theory… where the unification of space and time implies that being of matter cannot be separated from its activity. The properties of subatomic particles can therefore only be understood in a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation."