Different Facets of Growth

During my visit to Istanbul and in the Asian part of it last week I noticed the construction of huge high-rise buildings next to some green parks. The growth of a city brought the idea of the different facts of growth in my mind. Fractal growth, vertical growth, horizontal growth, primary growth and secondary growth, chaotic growth and cancerous growth are examples of what I mean. The water that irrigates the fractal trees is so much ordered and produces fractal ice. Water freezes to settle into beautifully shaped hexagons because of the hydrogen bonding that limits the complete freedom of water molecules to move. Paradoxically, it is this limitation that adds beauty and beautiful characteristics to water. Can we learn from water as a reference point the value of collective movement in growing water chains?

Trees are fractals. Their constituents are fractal. Look at leaves of trees and how they grow so as not to eclipse light from each other. The higher the leaves are, the smaller they are. Again, this provides another example of restricted movement that leads to fairness and distribution of sunlight (and information light as well). Restriction doesn't mean ugliness; in contrast, it means fractal beauty. As the water freezes, loses its heat, molecules vibrate less and so form beautiful geometric patterns. Beauty lies in restricted movement and vibrations.

Trees have parts that grow horizontally such as roots while the rest of the tree mostly grows vertically. There are advantages to both. Trees have resources and they know when to grow vertically or horizontally. Horizontal integration is the act of integrating other infrastructures and assets. This way the roots of tress assist the vertical growth of trees. There is no free movement as the vertical growth limits its healthy potential to the support it gets from the horizontal growth of roots. Trees can venture into new vertical aspects of the business because of the support of the horizontal growth.

Trees teach us more. Vertical growth can be further restricted by turning into secondary growth. Trees primary growth leads to elongation while secondary growth leads to the thickening of roots and the stem. Trees don't forget that vertical growth needs support from strong roots and stems.

Does the above discussion negate with "rhizome-like" growth? Rhizome is a philosophical term used to describe the relations and connectivity of things. The authors Deleuze and Guattari, have assigned this term “rhizome” referring to a relation like that of roots. They spread underground with no direction, no beginning, and no end. They are dispersed. It is opposed to the idea of a tree which has a starting point, and from there branches out in a predictable path.  When compared to the relation between things, a rhizome forms assemblages. An assemblage is a gathering and grouping of things. D & G also talk about two planes of interaction. There is the plane of organization where things interact in a vertical form, with hierarchy and in a specific order where if one of its parts is missing, then the whole structure collapses. The second plane would be the plane of consistency. The rhizome takes action in this plane. It is a horizontal alliance with no specific direction where were all multiplicities that make part of it, interact with one another. This thinking invited a new idea to my mind. We need to spot when growth should divert from primary growth to a secondary one and how it would be possible to do that. The idea of using the concept of chirped mirror occurred to me. A chirped mirror is made to reflect a wider range of light frequencies. This is done by creating layers with different depths. There may be 10 layers with a depth designed to reflect a certain wavelength of light, another 10 layers with slightly greater depth to reflect a slightly longer wavelength of light, and so on for the entire range of wavelengths of light the mirror is designed to reflect. Because light reflected from the deeper layers of the mirror travels a longer distance than the light that reflects off the surface layers, a chirped mirror can be designed to change the relative times of wavefronts of different wavelength reflecting from it. Do we need to introduce the concept of chirped mirror so as to limit the rhizome type of thinking? I believe so. Can we then "play" with the spacetime of growth?

Devesh Bhatt commented on one of my buzzes by writing "multiple points of inception and paths , superimposing our thought patterns on another, the self similarity gets mutated . I remember that you had introduced me to the word fractal thinking as a comment to one of my articles, then I saw Milos Djukic use the term fractals forever. I believe patterns reflect balance which has more to do with sustenance rather than efficiency, the scale of our life cycle is too small and we see the repetition as being efficient because it's unchanging in our time. But for the universe it's ever changing and ever evolving and the patterns are multilayered where man has just begun to comprehend the beauty with a few discoveries. I believe, every single human being possessing an honest approach to thinking and learning in this sense is fractal. The beauty about thinking, its intangible with infinite possibilities...hence infinite fractals shows less". I wonder if this buzz provided any response to this great comment of Devesh.