Conference hydra::dejavu

    Topic number 103 in DSSDEV::Philosophy is a topic reserved for
    Catastrophy Theory which seems to be a subset of Chaos Theory. Since I
    had a catastrophic memory loss and don't remember how to make it so
    that you can press select to enter the conference into your notebook,
    you'll have to do it yourself. B^)

    A previous brief discussion of Chaos theory may be found in notes
    536.52,.54,.55, & .56 (thanks ENOTES).
    
    				Topher
    

    On Sunday last, 5/22/88, I had the good fortune to meet amd talk
    with Tom Sawyer, who experienced a Near Death Experience (NDE) ten
    years ago. He was written about in Ken Ring's book, Heading Towards
    Omega. The reason this is relevant to this note is that while I
    was talking to him about the implications of his experience vis-a-vis
    the many worlds interpretation of Bell's Therom, he asked me if
    I'd ever heard about Chaos. I vaguely remembered that it had something
    to do with fractals and the phenomena of order arising from entropy.
    
    At that point he said that soon I'd be hearing a lot more about
    the subject. In his opinion the impact of the science of Chaos on
    present day views grounded in Einstein and Quantum Mechanics will
    be as great as their impact on a world view based on Newtonian
    physics.
    
    So on Monday, less than 24 hours later I bumped into this note,
    and was quite disapointed to see that little was to be found either
    here or in the note in the Philosophy conference. How nice that
    my urge to go to the library yesterday after work was rewarded
    with the book CHAOS-MAKING A NEW SCIENCE by James Gleick. 
    
    Tom Sawyer made it quite clear that I would be making a connection
    with Chaos quite soon because of my interest in the subject. So
    put it down to the bugbear of coincidence,  or acausal event, or
    synchronicity, the fact is that in only a few days I've got this
    book in my hands that neither he or I new about. 
    
    I'm only a few pages into  the book and I know it's going to be
    a good one. The material appears to be no more difficult than
    that found in The Tao of Physics-F. Capra and a New Science of
    Life-R. Sheldrake. I'll relate a bit more after the book is consumed.
    
    						Peace,
       
                                                      Reilly
    
    
    .
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    
    Re: .3
    
    Every time I'm in a bookstore, I pick up this book!  Unfortunately,
    money's been tight lately so I always put it back on the shelf.
    It is definitely on my list of next books to read.  An interesting
    side note, here at HLO2 we have a library.  On the bulletin board
    outside of the library, they tack up book jackets of the latest
    selection - and "Chaos" is there very prominently.  Isn't DEC great?!
    
    Carole
     

    
    There are even more connections than in simply science alone.
    
    In "The Different Drum", by Scott Peck, he states that the 4 stages
    of community (as he defines it) are:
    
    	- Pseudocommunity (pretending to have it together)
    	- Chaos (fighting, letting one's hair down, confusion)
    	- Emptiness (letting each other be as they are)
    	- Community (everyone is OK where they're at and liked for it)
                                                               
    To me there seems to be a good match here and I'm thinking that
    this whole 'model' or pattern can be found in just about everything 
    that is growing toward maturity (science, human relations, governments,
    society, economics, etc.)
    
    Of course I'm hoping that in the long run it will become apparent
    to all that all paths lead to the same place - Home. We have a ways
    to go yet though.
    
    There is another good book entitled "Beyond Einstein" which goes
    into the superstring theory.  I haven't read it yet but others have
    said it is quite good.
    
    Any comments?
    
    Cindy
                     

RE: The Chaos Book
    
    You were lucky to find it in the library.  Its a best-seller and
    libraries have trouble keeping best-sellers on the shelf.
    
    I haven't read it yet (a copy is sitting next to my bed, along with
    Hawkings new book -- there's always too much to read), but it has
    been very well received by the scientific community (unlike "The
    Tao..." and "A New Science...").
    
RE: Impact
    
    Chaos theory has already had an immense impact on many areas of
    science, but I do not think that it will have the same kind of
    *fundamental* impact that Relativity and QM have had.  Those changed
    how we thought about what time and space are while chaos theory
    only sets limits on what we can do in practice.
    
    The fundamental philosophical implication of chaos theory is:
    
    	Determinism does *not* imply predictability even in principle.
    
    This would have had much more impact before QM, but since determinism
    is no longer thought to be anything but a statistical illusion it
    has simply become:
    
    	Quantum uncertainty is routinely reflected in the macroscopic
    	world.
    
    More important is an essentially engineering principle:
    
    	For many phenomena, there is a limit to how much increasing
    	your data or increasing the work put into using the data will
    	help you in making predictions about those phenomena.
    
    For example (somewhat poetically don't take the exact time period
    too seriously):
    
    	To predict the whether it will rain in London six weeks from
    	now you would have to take into account the vortexes created
    	in the atmosphere by the beating of a butterflies wings in
       	Brazil.
    
    The ray of hope is that regularities are being discovered in the
    way all such chaotic systems act so that although we will never
    be able to predict where a whirlpool will form in a stream we can
    know with great accuracy how the number of little whirlpools will
    increase or decrease as the water flows faster or deeper.
    
    Its very exciting.
    
RE: Beyond Einstein
    
    I haven't read it either, and I can't remember whether the reviews
    I've read are good or bad.  Superstrings are certainly an exciting
    area which may make a lot of rather arbitrary things about the
    way the universe seems to be put together make some sense.
    
    					Topher

      >>  To predict the whether it will rain in London six weeks from
      >>  now you would have to take into account the vortexes created
      >>  in the atmosphere by the beating of a butterflies wings in
      >>  Brazil.
        
    
    (8^) ...sounds familiar, the Buddhists have been saying this for
               many, many years... 
    
    Fascinating subject, I cannot get hold of the books so please keep
    us informed...
    
    Dave.

    I bought the "Chaos" book by Gleick and found it OK, but not dreadfully
    informative on chaos theory.  It DOES give you some of the basics,
    but not much.  Most of it concerns itself with the careers of the
    various scientists who established the field (or are establishing
    it, since it is still very new).  It is more a study in contemporary
    history of science than an introduction to chaos theory.
    
    Chaos theory, so far as it has been taken, seems to show implications
    of existing physical theory that had not been seen before, but not
    to put forward new physical theory, at least not on the fundamental
    level.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Welcome to a Chaotic Universe...
    
    Well not so chaotic after all. You might want to consider that anything
    you tune into will manifest itself in your life.
    
    That seems to be the idea from RAW's book, _Cosmic_Trigger_, which
    I haven't read yet.
    
    Perhaps what I trying to say, without seeming like a closet Discordian,
    is that if you fix your attention on something, you're likley to
    find it. Are you prepared??

If the order of something goes beyond our comprehension, then that does not 
mean that it is chaotic.

One definition of chaos; that which goes against the current, discernable 
order.

Chaos can be useful in creating a new order (useful if it is a higher order) 
because often, the old has to be disrupted to bring in the new.

RE: .10 (GENRAL::DANIEL)
    
    Not to disagree, but to clarify somewhat the meaning of "chaos"
    being used here:
    
    Chaos theory refers to a mathematical model of a physical system.
    Such a mathematical model is said to be chaotic when a physical
    system which is accurately modeled could not be precisely comprehended
    (actually -- predicted) by *any* finite physical entity, specifically
    because such precise comprehension/prediction woule require an
    infinite amount of information.
    
    It turns out, rather to everyone's suprise that pretty simple
    mathematical descriptions lead to precisely this behavior.  Whether
    the actual behavior of a physical system, which is always more complex
    than any model we can invent for it, is "truely chaotic", can never
    really be answered.  But it seems unlikely that adding more complex
    details will make the system less chaotic and chaos theory makes rather
    specific *statistical* predictions in many cases which seem to accurately
    describe the physical systems being studied.
    
    					Topher

Well, Topher...there you have it.

;-)
Meredith

    I have access to a couple of the news wire services and found this on
    one of them. 

    Jamie.

    RTw  06/02 1441  CHAOS -- IT CAN BE CONTROLLED, SCIENTISTS SAY

    LONDON, June 3, Reuter - The scientific theory of Chaos, that says a
    butterfly fluttering its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side
    of world, can be controlled by careful tweaks, physicists reported on
    Thursday.

    Chaos theory, which has been around since the beginning of the century,
    says that most events are governed by extremely complicated rules.

    One of its best known examples is the "butterfly effect" in which the
    tiny movements of the creature's wings are magnified by the chaotic
    nature of the earth's atmosphere.

    Troy Shinbrot, a physicist at the University of Maryland, said in an
    article in the science journal Nature that scientists all over the
    world are finding ways to use the butterfly effect to control chaotic
    systems.

    He gave as an example a troublesome radio transmitter.

    "Because it's chaotic, it will amplify tiny disturbances," Shinbrot
    said in a telephone interview. "If you can control them ...you will
    produce enormous effects on the final transmission."

    Its signal could be boosted using tiny, electronic bursts emitted from
    a small, inexpensive circuit. "And you don't have to be a rocket
    scientist to do it," he added.

    Shinbrot said he hoped to apply his research to areas like weather.
    Hurricanes, for example, are unpredictable, but chaos theory could be
    used to control them.

    "By using very simple tools from chaos theory we can understand these
    structures and build them in laboratories," he said. "Then we can
    understand how to get rid of them."

    REUTER MMF JKF

    I noticed Chaos Theory was integral to explaining why things would go
    awry in the film _Jurassic Park_.
    
    Richard
    

>    I noticed Chaos Theory was integral to explaining why things would go
>    awry in the film _Jurassic Park_.

Maybe in the book, but the movie glossed over it.  In fact, it probably
would have made more sense to people watching the film if they had left
all references to chaos theory out.  Heaven knows they made enough major
changes from the book anyway :-).

-Joe

    I've just started a book on the concept of chaotic patterns in biological 
    evolution, Stuart Kauffman's _The_Origins_of_Order_.  It's extremely 
    technical, but it also has an excellent introductory chapter which 
    briefly discusses the conceptual underpinnings of the neo-Darwinist
    synthesis that contemporary biology is based on, and the ways in which
    'Chaos Theory,' (though he rarely uses that term specifically it
    is clearly implied throughout) may expand and fill in various weak
    areas in biological thinking.   
    
    As Roger Lewin says in his capsule review of the book in his
    _Complexity_, Origins of Order_ is 'for the devoted.'  :-)
    
    					kind regards,
    
    					todd