Attractor
Named by 3 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.
The staircase that shows the whole orbit
Take a number, feed it to a rule, feed the answer back in. There is a way of drawing that on the rule's own graph which turns the entire future of a starting point into a shape — and the shape is legible.
The road paved with doublings
Turn one dial slowly and watch what a map settles into. It settles on a point, then on two points, then four, then eight — faster and faster, and the doublings run out at a parameter that is finite.
Two lobes and no cycle
Three equations, three variables, and a trajectory that never crosses itself, never repeats, and never leaves a region of zero volume. The set it settles onto is not a point, not a loop, and not a surface.
Named alongside it
The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.
BifurcationFixed pointLogistic mapOrbitPeriodic orbitSelf similarityTransientChaosCobwebDissipationFractal dimensionIteration