Read Online All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen - Free Book Online Page B

He was holding before them the photograph of Christchurch, New Zealand. "If I photocopied the edge of this peninsula as you see it from space, then took a close-up photograph of, say, one meter of the same coast—and if I resized both photos, you would not be able to tell the 300 kilometer image from the one-meter strip. With a fractal, the geometries of part and whole are the same. The whole is visible, as it were, in the part. Do you eat cauliflower, Inspector?"
        "Excuse me?"
        "Cauliflower—also broccoli. Do you eat them?"
        "Yes."
        "Both fractal. A single floret of either looks like the whole. Do you see?"
        Poincaré did. "The world in a grain of sand," he said. "You knew Fenster."
        Quito nodded. "I'm an economist, and he was a mathematician. Sometimes odd ducks will dance."
        Nearly a minute passed, not a word spoken. When it occurred to Poincaré that his guest thought he was done with explanations, he opened his hands as if shortchanged at the market. "That's all? I'm conducting a murder investigation. I need something more than ducks."
        "What can I say?" answered Quito. "It wasn't a happy period. James and I collaborated for a time and very nearly published a paper, but then—" He paused to align the photographs. "I'll try to explain. Mathematicians write equations; they play with numbers and symbols that do not, necessarily, attach themselves to things in the world. They love the purity of that. Economists model real events, and reality—it's such a mess."
        Poincaré was thinking of the blue tarp flapping over the remains of James Fenster—of that and the jewel box of shattered glass around the Ambassade. "I've noticed. What were you working on?"
        In all seriousness, Quito folded his hands and said: "A mathematical model of love."
        Laurent erupted as if someone had set a torch under him. His laughter set off a spasm of coughing that turned his face bright red.
        "Go on," said Quito. "Have your fun. We were developing a concept—a notion that mathematics could model the most unruly, unpredictable of human behaviors. If we could model love, we could model anything. We tried representing lovers' affections symbolically, and then we set out to graph outputs that might predict behavior in famous literary relationships. Our first paper was to be an analysis of Romeo and Juliet. "
        "Finally," Laurent gasped, struggling to catch his breath, "I know why my marriages failed. I never understood nonlinear equations!" He began coughing again and excused himself to find a cup of water.
        This time Quito joined the laughter at his own expense. "I've endured worse. So few people take this seriously, I'm afraid. But there is a mathematics of the heart. My parents understood it, yet they were illiterate."
        "And what's that?" said Ludovici, who until this point was content to watch.
        "Among those who love, one plus one rarely equals two."
        "Amen to that !"
        "For better and worse, young man."
        Quito turned to Poincaré: "The premise is not as absurd as it sounds—although I admit it was calculated to get people's attention. James and I were attempting to make a larger point. How to illustrate it?" Poincaré followed his glance out a window, to the square. A truck horn blared, and Quito snapped to attention. "Fine," he said. "A typical example. Traffic. Imagine traffic in a city of your choice during the summer on a Friday afternoon at five o'clock. Describe what you see, Inspector."
        "Gridlock," answered Poincaré. "A parking lot."
        "Exactly. It's a human system: humans at the wheel, humans in cars that other humans built, humans on highways that other humans laid. Will you grant me this—the cars and the gridlock are a purely human system?"
        Poincaré nodded.
        "Good. Traffic engineers use mathematics—principles of fluid dynamics—to study traffic