Recursion

[LARA]

Wasn't sure whether to throw this one into science or philosophy, but well....

I remember a book I had as a little girl that had a very insane cover design.  On the front was a girl holding the book with the girl holding the book with the girl holding the book.  I used to stare at that cover for a long, long time.

This is the essential principle of fractals, a repeating, recursive system (was that redundant??) mathematically based.

I think it's also called the Droste Cocoa effect after a famous tin the company produced that illustrated the looping phenomenon.

For a long time I had to sit and wonder if the world was fractal like.  We get our fractal equations from nature afterall.  But aside from being a topic for the very stoned, does the idea of recursion have any scientific merit?

Our world seems to have levels of organization from the atomic to the molecular, from the cellular to the multicellular, from the multicellular to perhaps the internet?  

But these systems aren't really recursive in the fundamental meaning, we don't go from an atom to the universe and discover that it's really just another atom. At least so far.

So is recursion a rule for the universe, or is the definition of reality in opposition with recursion?  Is our rule in actuality, "Now for something completely different?"  Is recursion boring?  Or would we feel some comfort in discovering a limit to our world, a repeating cycle to it, and from that limit we would have to assume new parameters and dive into another universe entirely, finding ourselves to be in a multiverse of highly complex recursive systems?  What would your universe be like?

[SteveS]

My biggest experience with the concept of recursion is in software development.  While not many software problems lend themselves to a recursive solution, when you find one that does recursion fits the bill wonderfully.  Recursion is both powerful and simple - I find this aesthetically pleasing.  So I would say that if our universe is (somehow) fundamentally recursive I would find this satisfying and beautiful.

I agree, though, that it doesn't appear to be, at least not in the conventional meaning of the word.