Historically, science has developed by reducing complex situations to simple ones, analyzing the components and synthesizing the original situation. While this 'reductionist' approach has been extremely successful, there are phenomena of such complexity that one cannot simplify them without eliminating the problem itself. Recently, attention has turned to such problems in a wide variety of fields. This is in part due to the development of fractal geometry. Fractal geometry provides the mathematical tools for handling complexity. The present volume is a collection of papers that deal with the application of fractals in both traditional scientific disciplines and in applied fields. This volume shows the advance of our understanding of complex phenomena across a spectrum of disciplines. While these diverse fields work on very different problems, fractals provide a unifying formalism for approaching these problems.

The history of describing natural objects using geometry is as old as the advent of science itself, in which traditional shapes are the basis of our intuitive understanding of geometry. However, nature is not restricted to such Euclidean objects which are only characterized typically by integer dimensions. Hence, the conventional geometric approach cannot meet the requirements of solving or analysing nonlinear problems which are related with natural phenomena, therefore, the fractal theory has been born, which aims to understand complexity and provide an innovative way to recognize irregularity and complex systems. Although the concepts of fractal geometry have found wide applications in many forefront areas of science, engineering and societal issues, they also have interesting implications of a more practical nature for the older classical areas of science. Since its discovery, there has been a surge of research activities in using this powerful concept in almost every branch of scientific disciplines to gain deep insights into many unresolved problems. This book includes eight chapters which focus on gathering cutting-edge research and proposing application of fractals features in both traditional scientific disciplines and in applied fields.

For almost ten years chaos and fractals have been enveloping many areas of mathematics and the natural sciences in their power, creativity and expanse. Reaching far beyond the traditional bounds of mathematics and science to the realms of popular culture, they have captured the attention and enthusiasm of a worldwide audience. The fourteen chapters of the book cover the central ideas and concepts, as well as many related topics including, the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Cellular Automata, L-Systems, Percolation and Strange Attractors, and each closes with the computer code for a central experiment. In the two appendices, Yuval Fisher discusses the details and ideas of fractal image compression, while Carl J.G. Evertsz and Benoit Mandelbrot introduce the foundations and implications of multifractals.

From the reviews: "In the world of mathematics, the 1980's might well be described as the "decade of the fractal". Starting with Benoit Mandelbrot's remarkable text The Fractal Geometry of Nature, there has been a deluge of books, articles and television programmes about the beautiful mathematical objects, drawn by computers using recursive or iterative algorithms, which Mandelbrot christened fractals. Gerald Edgar's book is a significant addition to this deluge. Based on a course given to talented high- school students at Ohio University in 1988, it is, in fact, an advanced undergraduate textbook about the mathematics of fractal geometry, treating such topics as metric spaces, measure theory, dimension theory, and even some algebraic topology. However, the book also contains many good illustrations of fractals (including 16 color plates), together with Logo programs which were used to generate them. ... Here then, at last, is an answer to the question on the lips of so many: 'What exactly is a fractal?' I do not expect many of this book's readers to achieve a mature understanding of this answer to the question, but anyone interested in finding out about the mathematics of fractal geometry could not choose a better place to start looking." #Mathematics Teaching#1

This fascinating book explores the connections between chaos theory, physics, biology, and mathematics. Its award-winning computer graphics, optical illusions, and games illustrate the concept of self-similarity, a typical property of fractals. The author -- hailed by Publishers Weekly as a modern Lewis Carroll -- conveys memorable insights in the form of puns and puzzles. 1992 edition.

Now approaching its tenth year, this hugely successful book presents an unusual attempt to publicise the field of Complex Dynamics. The text was originally conceived as a supplemented catalogue to the exhibition "Frontiers of Chaos", seen in Europe and the United States, and describes the context and meaning of these fascinating images. A total of 184 illustrations - including 88 full-colour pictures of Julia sets - are suggestive of a coffee-table book. However, the invited contributions which round off the book lend the text the required formality. Benoit Mandelbrot gives a very personal account, in his idiosyncratic self-centred style, of his discovery of the fractals named after him and Adrien Douady explains the solved and unsolved problems relating to this amusingly complex set.