African Influences in Cybernetics

Ron Eglash is an American professor, a cyberneticist and a research of a field known as ethnomathematics (the study of the relationship between mathematics and culture). His work researches the early and continued use of fractal patterns in African architecture, art, and religion, and the relationships between indigenous cultures and modern technological advancements like cybernetics.

This morning I stumbled upon a paper published in 1995 entitled “African Influences in Cybernetics” in which Ron writes…

The use of African material culture as a form of analog representation is particularly vivid in cases of recursive information flow. In African architecture, recursive scaling – that is fractal geometry – can be seen in a variety of forms. In North Africa it is associated with the feedback of he “arabesque” artistic form, particularly in the branches of branches forming city streets. In Central Africa it can be seen in additive rectangular wall formations, and in West Africa we we circular swirls of circular houses and granaries. This is not limited to a visual argument; the fractal structure of African settlement patterns has been confirmed by computational analysis of digitized photos in Eglash and Broadwell (1989).

Recursive scaling in Egyptian temples can be viewed as a formalized version of the fractal architecture found elsewhere in Africa, and is most significant in it’s use of the Fibonacci sequence. The sequence is named for Leonardo Fibonacci (ca. 1175-1250), who is also associated with an unusual example of recursive architecture in Europe. The Fibonacci sequence was one of the first mathematical models for biological growth patterns, and inspired Alan Turing and other important figures in the history of computational morphogenesis. Since Fibonacci was sent to North Africa as a boy and devoted his years there to mathematics education (Gies and Gies 1969), it is possible that seminal example of recursive scaling is of African origin.

Eglash has dedicated his entire career to the studies of facts like this – taking modern mathematic theory usually resigned to computer scientists and engineers, and making incredible conclusions based on evidence uncovered by researching different cultures around the world. In the same paper he mentions the work of the then renown (but relatively unknown to the public), Nicholas Negroponte (founder of OLPC) and his study of ‘vernacular architecture’ which was largely based on African research.

Although the paper is very much ‘academic’, I think it’s a pretty fascinating read for anyone and only more impressive knowing that nearly a decade later, Ron would share his ideas with the world by give his memorable presentation at TED about African villages layed out in perfect representations of fractal recursion.

Read the Entire Paper