ABSTRACT
This chapter provides how the protean energy within the Mandelbrot set generates these uncanny emergences of sets within smaller sets. It argues that the earlier exploration of the Mandelbrot set adds something additional to the exploration. The chapter demonstrates how the micropressures on a point buried deep in the edges of the set unleash a tremendous amount of energy made manifest by the almost galactic spirals of forms emerging therein. Franz Kafk “An Imperial Message” provides an excellent example of mathematical poiesis—defined, again, as a making that can be explored using mathematical precepts. The French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot coined the term fractal from the Latin adjective and corresponding verb fractus and frangere—from which the words fraction, refraction, and fragment all emerge. Dots, too, figure into mathematics as points on a graph, but because it is a mere model—a sheer fiction—the ink of the dot smudges over an infinite number of other dots nearby.
