Notes on chaos

This post is a pretty random group of reactions to the ideas of chaos theory presented in James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science (1987).

According to previous understandings of nature, “Simple systems behave in simple ways. . . . Complex behavior implies complex causes. . . . Different systems behave differently” (303). However, chaos theory argues that “Simple systems give rise to complex behavior. Complex systems give rise to simple behavior. And most important, the laws of complexity hold universally, caring not at all for the details of a system’s constituent atoms” (304).

This theory suggests that commonly held assumptions about the behavior of the world are flawed. Natural systems do not exhibit simple, linear behavior. They do, however, exhibit patterns, but these patterns are often fractal, that is, they exhibit constant change and transformation at all scales and cannot be boiled down to simple geometric shapes. An example would be the contrast between a triangle, which only gives information at one scale, and a fractal image, which exhibits more information no matter what scale you look at.

“Libchaber believed that biological systems used their nonlinearity as a defense against noise. The transfer of energy by proteins, the wave motion of the heart's electricity, the nervous system—all these kept their versatility in a noisy world.” (194).

This is an interesting observation, since most communication deals at some level with the problem of overcoming noise, that is, barriers that prevent a clear understanding of the message. This phenomenon presents itself in nature as well as in language. Proposing non-linearity, the ability of seemingly chaotic systems to generate order, as a means of overcoming noise deserves more attention in studies of communication.

“the spontaneous emergence of self-organization ought to be part of physics” (252).

And everything else, I would say. The question of order pops up in a lot of scientific literature; attempting to find the answer to it is one of the things that attracts me to chaos and complexity theory. Most analytic effort is spent trying to explain the nature of order, but only recently has the origin of order taken the forefront in scientific questioning.