Docsity
Docsity

Prepare for your exams
Prepare for your exams

Study with the several resources on Docsity


Earn points to download
Earn points to download

Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan


Guidelines and tips
Guidelines and tips

Crashes in The Wall between Science and Religion – Fractal Chaos | MATH 1319, Study notes of Mathematics

Material Type: Notes; Class: Math in the Modern World (C); Subject: Mathematics; University: University of Texas - El Paso; Term: Unknown 1989;

Typology: Study notes

Pre 2010

Uploaded on 08/19/2009

koofers-user-jcy
koofers-user-jcy 🇺🇸

10 documents

1 / 3

Toggle sidebar

This page cannot be seen from the preview

Don't miss anything!

bg1
FRACTAL CHAOS - Crashes in the Wall Between Science and
Religion
By Ralph Losey
At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in
time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
The rapidly accelerating discoveries of Chaos are overtaking our worldview. They teach
us that Newton, and indeed almost all of the pre-chaos scientists, were dead wrong in their
basic view of the Universe. They thought that there was a predictable cause and effect for
everything, and that everything happened according to fixed physical laws. They believed in
certainties, not probabilities. Their fundamental image of the Universe was a big clock. The
presence of a divine being was only necessary to make the clock and wind it up. After He
created the Universe, all “God” had to do was sit back and watch. The laws would operate in a
predictable causal fashion.
Old science actually used to think that if you only knew all of the initial conditions, how
the clock worked, you could predict what would happen at any point in time. Science assumed
that everything could be known and eventually predicted. The Universe was ruled by a detailed
system of unchanging laws. Cosmos and causality reigned supreme. There was no room for
chaos and so it was conveniently swept under the rug. The inevitable outcome of the ordered
machine view was the complete winding down of the clock, the end of time in complete entropy
- the second law of thermodynamics where everything tends to breakdown, to dissipate. This
big picture of science naturally spawned the "God is dead" philosophies, nihilism, the life
nausea of existentialism, behavioralism, communism and the like. Now with the Chaos theories
this paradigm is itself dead. A whole new scientific view has been born, one much more in
accord with an organic view, the common law, and philosophies of hope and spirit.
The cosmic clock image of establishment science first began to crumble at the turn of
the century when physicists found that at the nuclear level the causal laws of physics didn't hold
true. The behavior of the atom and individual electron could not be predicted. Still, even in the
face of incontrovertible evidence of quantum physics, old ideas die hard. The static civil law
mind set would not die easily. Even Einstein could not believe that “God” would play dice with
the Universe. He searched in vain for a unified field theory that would explain away the chance
and unpredictability so obvious in the subatomic world. Science struggled to maintain its
centuries old view. The belief in a causal cosmos was now on shaky ground because it lacked a
subatomic foundation. Still it prevailed because the rest of the world of physics seemed to follow
linear, orderly and predictable clock like processes. Besides, no one had articulated a different
view to replace it. The subatomic world was considered an insignificant anomaly, an exception
that proved the rule.
pf3

Partial preview of the text

Download Crashes in The Wall between Science and Religion – Fractal Chaos | MATH 1319 and more Study notes Mathematics in PDF only on Docsity!

FRACTAL CHAOS - Crashes in the Wall Between Science and

Religion

By Ralph Losey At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) The rapidly accelerating discoveries of Chaos are overtaking our worldview. They teach us that Newton, and indeed almost all of the pre-chaos scientists, were dead wrong in their basic view of the Universe. They thought that there was a predictable cause and effect for everything, and that everything happened according to fixed physical laws. They believed in certainties, not probabilities. Their fundamental image of the Universe was a big clock. The presence of a divine being was only necessary to make the clock and wind it up. After He created the Universe, all “God” had to do was sit back and watch. The laws would operate in a predictable causal fashion. Old science actually used to think that if you only knew all of the initial conditions, how the clock worked, you could predict what would happen at any point in time. Science assumed that everything could be known and eventually predicted. The Universe was ruled by a detailed system of unchanging laws. Cosmos and causality reigned supreme. There was no room for chaos and so it was conveniently swept under the rug. The inevitable outcome of the ordered machine view was the complete winding down of the clock, the end of time in complete entropy

  • the second law of thermodynamics where everything tends to breakdown, to dissipate. This big picture of science naturally spawned the "God is dead" philosophies, nihilism, the life nausea of existentialism, behavioralism, communism and the like. Now with the Chaos theories this paradigm is itself dead. A whole new scientific view has been born, one much more in accord with an organic view, the common law, and philosophies of hope and spirit. The cosmic clock image of establishment science first began to crumble at the turn of the century when physicists found that at the nuclear level the causal laws of physics didn't hold true. The behavior of the atom and individual electron could not be predicted. Still, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence of quantum physics, old ideas die hard. The static civil law mind set would not die easily. Even Einstein could not believe that “God” would play dice with the Universe. He searched in vain for a unified field theory that would explain away the chance and unpredictability so obvious in the subatomic world. Science struggled to maintain its centuries old view. The belief in a causal cosmos was now on shaky ground because it lacked a subatomic foundation. Still it prevailed because the rest of the world of physics seemed to follow linear, orderly and predictable clock like processes. Besides, no one had articulated a different view to replace it. The subatomic world was considered an insignificant anomaly, an exception that proved the rule.

Then along came the Science of Chaos in the last part of this century to show that causality did not apply everywhere else as thought. In fact close measurements revealed that the unpredictable appeared in what was previously believed to be the most ordered and predictable of systems, the swinging of a simple pendulum - the very heart of a clock. As James Gleick's book Chaos shows the brave early explorers of Chaos found that Science had been fooling itself for centuries by ignoring tiny deviations in its data and experiments. If a number was slightly off what the causal laws predicted, the pre-chaos scientists simply assumed there was an error in measurement in order to uphold the sanctity of the law itself. In order to preserve their pseudo-cosmos, scientists limited their investigation to closed and artificial systems, avoiding the turbulence of open systems like the plague. Causality was the prime assumption behind all pre-chaos science and it never occurred to anyone to question it. This conceptual bias created a blind spot of enormous proportions. But the reality of open systems, the Chaos lurking behind all order, would not be denied. The charade of perfect order and fudged experimental data could not last forever. By the nineteen seventies it began to crumble, the conceptual blinders were falling from the eyes of more and more scientists. By the nineteen eighties the fly in the ointment, the unpredictable results in what should have been perfect predictability, could no longer be denied. The Science of Chaos was born. Our understanding of the world will never be the same. After nearly two decades now of work by Chaoticians made up of the leading scientists and mathematicians in a wide variety of fields, the evidence is overwhelming. The world is not a gigantic clock where everything happens in an ordered and predictable manner. The real world is fundamentally disordered, free. Chaos reigns over predictability. Simple, linear systems which are causal and predictable are the exception in the Universe, not the rule. Most of the Universe works in jumps, in a non-linear fashion that can not be exactly predicted. It is infinitely complex. Freedom and free will - the Strange Attractors - prevail over rules and determinacy. Yet Chaos is no enemy and destroyer of Cosmos, for from out of Chaos a higher order always appears, but this order comes spontaneously and unpredictably. It is "self-organized." The creation of the Universe is an ongoing process, not just a one time event at the beginning. All and everything - and everyone - is part of this creative process. Over time all systems - from molecules, to life, to galactic clusters - are continually creating new organizations and patterns from out of featurelessness and chaos. The world is not a Clock, it is a Game, a Game of Chance and Choice. In the game random processes - chance and serendipity - allow room for free will, individuality and unpredictable creativity. The Universe is governed by laws, but the laws are of a different kind than previously thought. Like the common law system, the Laws of Wisdom are inherently flexible. They are not written in stone, they are general. They leave infinite room for creativity within certain general parameters. A few fundamental principals exist to establish the parameters, but the Law governs much more loosely than previously thought. The Laws are subject to changes and modifications over time and depend upon the particular facts. Like the common law, the Laws of Nature appear to have flexibility; many things are decided on a case by case basis. Self organization is the rule, not the exception. Everything is not pre-determined by a rigid and