Olive Schreiner

In The Story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner gives one of the clearest descriptions of natural fractals we have ever read. Not only does she see clearly hierarchical structures over many levels, but she observes the universality of fractal processes.

This is an insightful observation for a contemporary author, but truly remarkable for someone writing in 1883. But then, Roger Ebert assures us that Schreiner was a remarkable person.

Here is Schreiner's description from page 153 of The Story of an African Farm.

A gander drowns itself in our dam. We take it out, and open it on the bank, and kneel, looking at it. Above are the organs divided by delicate tissues; below are the intestines artistically curved in a spiral form, and each tier covered by a delicate network of blood-vessels standing out red against the faint blue background. Each branch of the blood-vessels is comprised of a trunk, bifurcating and rebifurcating into the most delicate, hair-like threads, symmetrically arranged. We are struck with its singular beauty. And, moreover - and here we drop from our kneeling into a sitting posture - this also we remark: of that same exact shape and outline is our thorn-tree seen against the sky in mid-winter; of that shape also is delicate metallic tracery between our rocks; in that exact path does our water flow when without a furrow we lead it from the dam; so shaped are the antlers of the horned beetle. How are these things related that such a deep union should exist between them all? Is it chance? Or, are they not all the fine branches of one trunk, whose sap flows through us all? That would explain it. We nod over the gander's inside.