““Studying ice crystals as a graduate student, he eventually found the basic design (equilateral, equiangled hexagon) so icily repeated, so unerringly conforming, that he couldn't help but shudder: Beneath the splendor--the filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars--was a ghastly inevitability; crystals could not escape their embedded blueprints any more than humans could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, the certainty of death.””
![“The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study…” quote by Benoit Mandelbrot](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ba1/benoit-mandelbrot-7685_challenges_the-existence-of-these-patterns-fractals_2163652.jpg)
