|
|
|
|
|
|
by krylon
3285 days ago
|
|
|
I have to admit I am a little sad this was an April fools joke. It would have been so cool if some obscure medieval monk had discovered the Mandelbrot set centuries ago. Then again, IIRC, complex numbers were not invented (discovered?) until the 1500s, so good old Udo would have had a hard time figuring out the math. |
|
|
"Initially, Udo's aim was to devise a method for determining who would reach heaven. He assumed each person's soul was composed of independent parts he called "profanus" (profane) and "animi" (spiritual), and represented these parts by a pair of numbers. Then he devised rules for drawing and manipulating these number pairs. In effect, he devised the rules for complex arithmetic, the spiritual and profane parts corresponding to the real and imaginary numbers of modern mathematics."