Humans are visual creatures. Objects we call "beautiful" or "aesthetic" are a crucial part of our humanity. Even the oldest known examples of rock and cave art served aesthetic rather than utilitarian ...

How long is a country’s border? That’s the seemingly simple question mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson asked himself more than 75 years ago. The thing that puzzled him was that the length of the ...

As Sigmund Freud made very clear, human beings are compelled to repeat patterns—the repetition compulsion. Patterns laid down early in life are propelled forward to recreate the familiar that can be ...

What makes a tree a tree? Or rather, why can we recognize trees in even quite abstract depictions when they are so varied in nature? Researchers have found a clue in the branches, and used math to ...

It’s virtually impossible to determine the exact length of a natural coastline. The problem is of knowing where to stop—or if a stopping point even exists. To completely measure the coastline, one ...