On second reading Chomsky's quote doesn't seem as hand-wavy about the Fibonacci Sequence as it initially appeared. It's one of those topics that has such a myriad of falsehoods perpetuated around it, that perhaps I was too primed to see it here.

>Some call pseudo-science "magical" due to ignorance.

This was the sense in which I used magical, although you are right. "Magical" can be used to evoke either the vision of pseudo-scientific nonsense or "magical" in the sense of "insufficiently understood, complex, and thus awe-inspiring."

>If you haven't already read it, I think this is a pretty interesting take on it (in a sense):

I devoured A New Kind of Science when it was released because I was fascinated by emergent systems and cellular automata at the time, and have read it again about a year ago, and found it didn't hold up as well. Nevertheless excellent book, if a bit bold in its claims.

I haven't seem the follow ups, but thanks for pointing me toward them! I'll be sure to give them a read.

Apologizes if I pushed back a little hard, but rest assured my only grudge here is with misuse of the Golden Spiral, not with Prof. Chomsky and certainly not with you.