Rhetorical twins: The fractal and organic geometries of Benoit Mandelbrot and Tadeusz Mysłowski
Rhetorical twins: The fractal and organic geometries of Benoit Mandelbrot and Tadeusz Mysłowski

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the subject of art/science intersections by presenting the affinities between the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and the visual artist Tadeusz Mysłowski. In the Introduction, their encounter is contextualized in an overview of earlier approaches to the study of such intersections, especially the changes in rhetorical theory and practice which led to the so-called rhetorical turn in the last decades of the 20th century. In Part 2, the evolution of visual rhetoric and the rhetoric of mathematics as autonomous subject areas within the broader field of rhetoric is discussed as constituting crucial parallel developments that now provide scholars with adequate tools to analyze and describe instances of rhetoricization of scientific and artistic communication. In Part 3, the example of the Mandelbrot/Mysłowski conjunction is scrutinized to bring out the rhetorical ramifications of their respective geometries – of fractals in the case of the mathematician and of elemental geometric-organic forms in the case of the artist.

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