[Tutor] recursive function example

[spir]

On 12/11/2013 03:56 PM, ugajin at talktalk.net wrote:
>   Self-similar (fractal) recursion, sounds complex, I am guessing this is like linear recursion but simultaneously in more than one dimension?
> Curious business really. Wonders, if I may be a closet programmer, or something,

It is not complex, or rather not *difficult* in itself; kids get it rather 
easily (I speak from experience). But it contradicts several assumptions of our 
common way of thinking (especially reductionisms of all kinds, that analysing 
something into little bits permits understanding the whole, as if a whole were a 
sum of bits; a really weird belief, that nearly every one believes. For 
instance, one cannot understand the principle of regulation without 
comtemplating the whole form [a negative feedback loop], undertanding the parts 
does not help much; each time they are different, but the whole schema remains. 
Similar schemes with self-similarity: each case is different, but the general 
category of self-similar forms remains: this is what we funnily call recursion 
in programming. Why do we call it so, instead of self-similarity or just 
self-call? No idea.)

Denis