Complexity & Chaos

Newtonian physics described a regular, clock-like world of forces and reaction; randomness was equated with incomplete knowledge. But scientists in the late twentieth century have found patterns in things formerly thought to be "chaotic"; their theories help explain the unstable, irregular, yet highly structured features of everyday experience. It now seems likely that randomness and chaos play an essential role in the evolution of the living world—and in intelligence itself.

Traditional scientific determinism has suggested that the natural world is regular and predictable, and that timeless and universal nature is best understood by studying its parts in isolation. For centuries scientists have viewed nature in terms of the conceptual and mathematical tools available-like the regular shapes of Euclidean geometry.

But chaos theory suggests that nature is unpredictable and irregular, and that it is better understood by studying the complex and unstable interactions among nature's many components. Nature's order and pattern is seen in a complex-looking geometric shape called the fractal, whose fundamental importance was discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot; these well-defined (yet not completely knowable) shapes pervade nature. We see and understand new patterns in what once seemed too complicated to explain-yet uncertainty is complete, inevitable,and necessary.