Don raised the point that "Chaotic systems often appear unruly and unlawful at the surface level, but deep inside there are fairly straightforward simple structures at play, once quite amenable to scientific test and to mathematical theories (that make testable predictions). " (see snip below)
This is a very important observation. I tell students that "chaos theory" is really about how systems can be seen to come into and fall out of patterns of order.
Hence chaos theory is really an expanded theory of order - one that allows scientists to go into realms of maths etc. that had previoulsy been seen as irrational and / or absurd.
Sierpinski's Carpet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_carpet> is not a monster but great fun, even if, like me, you cannot understand the maths.
Setting it up in a CAD program allows the sense of the infinite to emerge from the finite.
All of which points out for me the current historical gap between much of the humanities and some of the sciences.
Post modernism has left much of the humanities with a sense of despair about what they are searching for and how they are searching for it. Many humanities people spend their time agonising over the irreducible particulars and the fading contingencies of subjective reality.
Most sciences still understand that they are looking for ratios - patterns of order - systems of recurrence.
Reading Klaus Krippendorff's book, The Semantic Turn, I was impressed with the sense of the heroic effort to establish understandings of order that was typical of the early researchers in the field.
I'm all for the search for order. Afterall, poetry (my primary practice) works by subtle shifts in patterns of sound and meaning - it does not work by magic.
cheers
keith russell
newcastle OZ
>>> Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> 02/10/12 12:28 PM >>>
(Postscript. Unfortunately for his argument, Birger uses the example
of "chaos phenomena in complex systems" that might rest outside of the
boundaries of science. Well, my many scientific friends who study
chaos will find that amusing. Chaotic systems often appear unruly and
unlawful at the surface level, but deep inside there are fairly
straightforward simple structures at play, once quite amenable to
scientific test and to mathematical theories (that make testable
predictions). That is one of the powers of science: it can often find
reason and lawful behavior in the underlying structure of system that,
on the surface, look completely random.
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