L-systems generate weevils, pizza toppings, and matriarchal lineages
Mark Dominus demonstrates how the Fibonacci L-system generates amusing linguistic sequences, producing variations of words like weevils, pepperoni, and family matriarchs.
summary is enough The short, playful post is easily understood from a summary, though the comment thread adds brief technical context on morphic words.
summary
Mark Dominus applies the Fibonacci L-system—a formal grammar where symbols are repeatedly substituted—to generate bizarre linguistic sequences. By mapping rabbit breeding rules to letters, he produces expanding words resembling insect names, pizza toppings, and family trees. The post highlights how simple string replacement rules can create complex, surprising patterns in human vocabulary.
key points
- The Fibonacci L-system uses simple substitution rules derived from a historical 1202 rabbit population problem.
- Iteratively applying these rules generates expanding words that mirror biological or lexical patterns like weevil names.
- Slight adaptations allow the same mathematical grammar to produce humorous variations of pizza toppings and family trees.
who should read it
Mathematicians, programmers, and linguistics enthusiasts looking for recreational applications of formal grammars.
discussion positive
This is hilarious. Most of these L-systems generate "morphic words", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_word, a kind of L-system I have a particular affection for, because it seems to me like the simplest kind of aperiodic sequence.
As a fascinating coincidence, it was specifically thanks to Mark Dominus that I was fiddling with L-systems on Monday, even though I was not yet aware of this article. I wanted plant models that were a little more stochastic and expressive than bare L-systems, but less verbose and clunky than the CGA shape grammars used in CityEngine. Claude suggested …
Kragen provides interesting context on morphic words and shares related work on context-free design grammars.
Generated by an LLM from the article and thread. Check the sources before relying on it.