Non-Linear Systems, Chaos, Complexity and Emergence 323
Conclusion
Because the living organisms of the biosphere and the conceptual
systems of the symbolosphere are emergent phenomena they cannot be
reduced to, derived from or predicted from the laws of physics. And so
we come to the end of the poetry of physics. Physics cannot help us
understand the mysteries of life or intelligence but it can help us
understand or at least admire the many fascinating aspects of our
universe, a universe that exhibits the fractal structure or self-similarity
we talked of above.
The Fractal Structure of the Universe: An Epilogue
Francesco Sylos Labini of the Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome, Luciano
Pietronero of the University of Rome, and Nikolay Vasilyev and Yurij
Baryshev of St Petersburg State University argue that cosmological data
from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) that encompasses roughly
800,000 galaxies and 100,000 quasars shows that the universe seems to
have a fractal structure as far out as our telescopes can see. Their paper
published in Nature is disputed by a number of other cosmologists who
claim the universe is homogeneous.
But given that fractal structures incorporate self-similarity there many
examples at many different scales in which the universe exhibits fractal
structures. If we examine living forms on our planet Earth we see many
examples of fractal structures of self-similarity. Consider a tree and the
way its trunk bifurcates into large branches which then continues to
bifurcate into smaller branches, and then into large twig, small twigs and
finally leaves. And when we examine the structure of leaves we find
another network of bifurcations and the same is true of the root system of
the tree. This fractal pattern of self-similarity can be found in the
structures of the human body in the circulatory system of the arteries,
veins and capillaries and in the fractal branching in the lungs from the
trachea, which splits into the two bronchi, which continue to split into
smaller and smaller tubes leading to bronchioles, which then lead into the
alveoli.
The fractal structure of biological systems has been well established
but let us for a moment reflect on the structure of the universe starting
with the atom and working our way up to galaxies to see another
example of the fractal structures of self-similarity. The basic structure is