Ron Eglash Quotes

Ron Eglash — American Scientist born on December 25, 1958,

Ron Eglash is an American cyberneticist, professor of science and technology studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and author widely known for his work in the field of ethnomathematics, which aims to study the diverse relationships between mathematics and culture... (wikipedia)

Fractal geometry is everywhere, even in lines drawn in the sand. It's the cycle of life... You see fractals in plants, in flowers. Within the human lung are branches within branches.

Creating a body of mathematics is about intellectual labor, not some kind of transcendental revelation. There are plenty of important components of European fractal geometry that are missing from the African version.

When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet.

Mathematicians didn't invent infinity until 1877. So they thought it was impossible that Africans could be using fractal geometry.

I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.

Ron Eglash Quotes

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