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The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

algorithmicbotany.org

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Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#21

Post by fsloth »

twtwtaway wrote: post #9

How can one not believe in God after seeing this?

Dude... it's really weird to quote varius tiny details of the natural world as proofs of the existence of a god. At what point is the particular system under observation dull enough for someone to believe that it would not have needed an 'outside' designer?

Because, the amazingly crazy details are present at every tiny bit of matter, alive or not. We don't know how to make life? Yeah, well, we don't know how to make energy either (we just transform it). And organization? Every friggin atom is apparently composed of the same kind of elementary particles that know how to behave with other particular kinds of particles when they interact with them exactly by the same rules.

Matter is not a chaotic soup. It's a dance by very specific rules.

The whole universe is rigged for organization. Why? I surely don't know.

I believe in the universe being awesome. It probably gives me same vibes as the belief in God gives others. I suggest we leave it at that.

But as mind blowing details of the natural world go:

Self similarity is a mathematical artifact of nature and you can observe this in "simple" matter. A one of the most striking examples of this is the von Karman vortex pattern that can be observed at any scale when there is a small obstruction in a 'flat' flow.

If you google 'von karman vortex' the image results will mostly display images of cloud vortices. However, the same pattern can be observed for instance around rocks in streams (even really tiny rocks in really tiny streams).

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#23

Post by tizzdogg »

twtwtaway wrote: post #14
tizzdogg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it shows that it just takes simple math and algorithms to make complex beautiful things, and not an all-powerful deity? Some people see the order behind natural beauty as evidence of a designer, but I think this actually demonstates how beautiful systems can arise on their own without guidance. If something was designed by an all-powerful being, it would be surprising if we mere humans could understand its pa…

Yeah, different perspectives indeed. But to me it seems unreasonable that for example the tablet I'm writing this on somehow came into existence by itself. Touchscreen, CPU, OS and no creator at all? The things we see in nature are much more complex than my tablet?

My point, and one of the lessons of this book, is that the things we see in nature are actually NOT that complex. Sure, they are endlessly varied and superficially very complicated, but the rules that govern them are pretty simple. We're able to describe them pretty well with simple computer programs and don't need to be a god to do so. Complexity and endless variation can result from extremely simple systems that are often easily understandable And follow directly from basic laws of nature.

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#24

Post by lelandbatey »

wallflower wrote: post #15
grownseed wrote: post #11

When I was 7, my dad introduced me to my first programming concept ever. While having a walk in the forest, he asked me to look at fern and made me inquire about its structure. He proceeded to tell me about recursivity and a very long conversation ensued. Needless to say, my mind was absolutely blown. Over the years, we had many discussions like that first one, relating programming concepts to real-life principles. M…

> Academics would sometimes do well to relate to the real world and deflate their egos. This is really the key to teaching beginners. The difference between telling someone what something is versus encouraging them to see it for themselves. Apart from the tired car analogy, how would you (or better how would your dad have) explain(ed) OOP to a relative beginner? We find that we sometimes have to start with the very b…

The way I had it explained to me I always really liked. We spent a long time on very simple things: logic, control flow, functions, variables. Then, after learning that and all the limitations of those tools, my teacher said: "an object is something that can contain functions and data. In fact, in many languages, functions and variables are both objects."

At least that's how I remember it.

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#25

Post by placebo »

I can understand why the algorithm for some fractals can turn out to look like plants. What I don't understand (probably for lack of reading up on the subject) is why do plants look like fractals. I mean you won't find some microprocessor in every plant issuing orders to grow according to a fractal formula so I assume this is a emergent statistical phenomena from constraints within the plant genetics - but is the bridge between the fractal shapes and plant shapes well understood?

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#26

Post by dougabug »

placebo wrote: post #25

I can understand why the algorithm for some fractals can turn out to look like plants. What I don't understand (probably for lack of reading up on the subject) is why do plants look like fractals. I mean you won't find some microprocessor in every plant issuing orders to grow according to a fractal formula so I assume this is a emergent statistical phenomena from constraints within the plant genetics - but is the bri…

Fractals have no inherent dependency on microprocessors. Microprocessors can be used to generate fractals simply because they can execute the generation rules of a fractal, but you could could likewise generate them with anything which can perform a specific affine transformation, for instance a copy machine. An affine transformation is simply a linear transformation together with a translation, for fractals the linear transformation would typically be a scaling composed with a rotation. You could easily imagine how you might follow such a simple growth pattern, just iterate the same scale rotate and translate operation mechanically so the branches look like the whole thing.

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#28

Post by evgen »

gwf wrote: post #19
jordan0day wrote: post #3

For something in a similar vein, but perhaps more approachable, check out The Computational Beauty of Nature ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Computational-Beauty-Nature-Explor... ).

Thanks for making the recommendation for CBofN (I am the author). I should also add that the naming of my book was clearly inspired by ABofP (or ripped-off, depending on your point of view). ABofP was a real inspiration to me.

Great book BTW! Is the Kindle version new? I ask because I could swear I went looking for this a year or so ago before moving and ended up having my copy scanned and pulped so that I could take it with me.

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#29

Post by baggers »

placebo wrote: post #25

I can understand why the algorithm for some fractals can turn out to look like plants. What I don't understand (probably for lack of reading up on the subject) is why do plants look like fractals. I mean you won't find some microprocessor in every plant issuing orders to grow according to a fractal formula so I assume this is a emergent statistical phenomena from constraints within the plant genetics - but is the bri…

Warning I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about. However my gut instinct is that self similarity mean shorter code (dna) shorter dna (protein chains) take less energy to copy thus gives you a survival advantage (often survival for plants means getting set up and leaves out fast). An experiment was done a while back where they took a bacterium and 'unrolled the code' of the dna (seems there are deduplication routines in nature). When the result was grown in a lab it behaved just like the original but didnt grow as large.

Re: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (1990)

#30

Post by SixSigma »

wallflower wrote: post #15
grownseed wrote: post #11

When I was 7, my dad introduced me to my first programming concept ever. While having a walk in the forest, he asked me to look at fern and made me inquire about its structure. He proceeded to tell me about recursivity and a very long conversation ensued. Needless to say, my mind was absolutely blown. Over the years, we had many discussions like that first one, relating programming concepts to real-life principles. M…

> Academics would sometimes do well to relate to the real world and deflate their egos. This is really the key to teaching beginners. The difference between telling someone what something is versus encouraging them to see it for themselves. Apart from the tired car analogy, how would you (or better how would your dad have) explain(ed) OOP to a relative beginner? We find that we sometimes have to start with the very b…

We keep the cooking equipment and raw materials in the kitchen. Same goes for the bathroom, laundry, den, bedroom.

These are all "rooms" which share features like doors, heating, floors, lights.

These will be in building, which could be detached, block, semi-detached, terrace.

These also have common processes but differences.

We human computers move between these rooms, sometimes we bring data with us (are we hungry, sleepy, with friends, naked) and use the processes and data in the rooms to perform useful actions. Once compete we might be in a different state (dressed, sated, refreshed, clean), the room might be different for the next person (dirty, empty, wet), we might leave the outputs there or take them with us to a different room or even outside of the building.

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