The development of a fractal isn't internal. Its shape is completely predetermined by its mathematical description. I think what the author is trying to say is

The development of a fractal isn't internal. Its shape is completely predetermined by its mathematical description. I think what the author is trying to say is that we could imagine the universe is a massively hyper-dimensional fractal that we are utterly hopeless to determine the initial starting point on. I can't immediately see a reason that model wouldn't work, but its descriptive power (relative to QM) is basically nil... To be consistent with the observations that demanded a quantum mechanical understanding of the universe, we have to introduce the idea that we can't know where we are on the fractal, so this is more a philosophical pondering than a physical one.