James Gleick said this quote

“ One simple but powerful consequence of the fractal geometry of surfaces is that surfaces in contact do not touch everywhere. The bumpiness at all scales prevents that. Even in rock under enormous pressure, at some sufficiently small scale it becomes clear that gaps remain, allowing fluid to flow. ”

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Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

~ James Gleick

It’s not an academic question any more to ask what’s going to happen to a cloud. People very much want to know—and that means there’s money available for it. That problem is very much within the realm of physics and it’s a problem very much of the same caliber. You’re looking at something complicated, and the present way of solving it is to try to look at as many points as you can, enough stuff to say where the cloud is, where the warm air is, what its velocity is, and so forth. Then you stick it into the biggest machine you can afford and you try to get an estimate of what it’s going to do next. But this is not very realistic.

~ James Gleick

Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.

~ James Gleick

You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it

~ James Gleick