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Notes to Pages 10–13 395
18. The observation was first made by Mandelbrot (1967); see Gleick (1987), p. 95,
for a nonmathematical exposition. Mandelbrot (1983), Chapter 6, explored many
geometrical examples of self-similarity.
19. One side in this debate is represented by S. J. Gould, who argued that species
represent one level in a hierarchy of levels and that selection occurs at every
level (Gould, 2002, Chap. 8). The other side of the debate is represented by
R. Dawkins, who argues that selection applies only at a single level, namely, that
of genes (Dawkins, 1976).
20. The idea that the interaction between supply and demand will drive the price of
an economic good to a stable level is a basic concept that is covered in any text-
book in micro-economics.
21. Koestler (1966); see also Koestler (1964, Book Two) and Koestler (1972).
22. See Alvarez (1998) for a popular account of this hypothesis.
23. Prigogine (1997), p. 26.
24. Peterson (1993), p. 270.
25. Peirce (1878b/1992), p. 193.
26. Hough (2004) provides a summary of what is known about earthquakes.
“Seismology is, in many ways, a non-repeatable science …” (p. 109).
27. Cox (2005).
28. For example, the 15th-century genius Leonardo da Vinci drew the flow of turbu-
lent water, apparently in an effort to understand it better; see, e.g., Plates 241 and
243 in Zöllner (2006). Leonardo’s complete paintings and drawings have been
collected by Zöllner and Nathan (2003). Many of the drawings can be viewed at
www.universalleonardo.org and at www.drawingsofleonardo.org.
29. See Note 9, this chapter.
30. The first Western works that are widely recognized as works of history in the
modern sense are The Histories (a.k.a. The Persian Wars), a description of
the Greco-Persian Wars by Herodotus (484–414 b.c.), and The History of the
Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (460–400 b.c.). Their works antedate the
first works that we now recognize as scientific in the modern sense by 1,500
years.
31. The idea that history passes through a fixed sequence of ages or eras, each age being
less happy than the previous one, is stated in Hesiod’s poem, Works and Days,
lines 97–204, written in the eighth century b.c., and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
lines 89–150, written in the first decade a.d. This idea has often been combined
with the idea that time is cyclic, so that at the end of the sequence, the Golden
Age reappears (Lovejoy & Boas, 1935/1997, Chap. 2). This view was held by the
Stoics, among others (Whitrow, 1989, Chap. 4). The idea that the Western con-
ception of history has evolved from cyclic to linear is generally accepted but has
been disputed by Press (1977). Sciences like climatology, evolution and thermo-
dynamics are firmly on side of linear time.
32. Bernstein (2004), Cheyney (1924), Harris (1968), esp. Chapters 2, 5 and 8, Snooks
(2002) and Tainter (1990).
33. The Industrial Revolution is as popular among authors as the scientific one.
See, e.g., Ashton (1948/1969), Bernstein (2004), Mokyr (1992, 1993) and Stearns
(1998).