Becoming One with the Chaos Theory
June 11, 2009
Category: Physics and Philosophy
I see the same universal patterns of chaos theory and fractals in everything I observe -- galaxy formation, the stock market, weather, plant growth, celestial orbits, dripping faucets and morality to name a few. Some of these things leave a kind of freeze frame image that clearly shows residual fractal patterns, such as galaxies, clouds and plants.
Some are more illusive like morality, the economy and faucet-dripping, where the patterns are not only hard to see but get lost in time. They don't happily stick around in the same ultra-slow-motion-3D-picture like the previously mentioned items do. It's easy, however, to record and graph a faucet dripping and observe fractal patterns emerging, much the same way we see patterns in the stock market through our recordings of it, which give us a glimpse into economic trends. In the natural evolution of morality, the chaotic/fractal patterns are much more hidden and arbitrarily hard to record. Yet I think they are there. I think they are everywhere.
A question that I constantly battle with is how much we should meddle in any of these processes. We ARE human, so is meddling with human morality really meddling, or is that PART of the natural process? Is meddling with our own economy really meddling? Or is it part of the process? Liberals and Conservatives would say yes to one and no to the other, and vice versa. There is something wrong with that picture. Libertarians say no to both, which makes more sense to me. At least it's consistent. But as I said, it is a constant battle for me.
If there is a correct answer at all, it's probably something like, "Yes, we may want to meddle a bit now, while we are still so primitive that we MUST think in abstract geometric patterns and cannot fully grasp chaotic processes in our daily lives. But once we evolve beyond this, we would do better to not impose our abstract linear geometry on top of nature herself." That said, we can argue endlessly to what degree we should meddle at this stage in our evolution.
Most animals don't exhibit abstract thought other than perhaps in some parts of their vision tracking processes, or in their ability to walk in a linear curve, etc. They certainly don't picture a tree like a child does, with a long rectangle for a trunk, and a circle for the leaves. They mark their territory more with smell and other complex natural cues, rather than thinking of a rectangle or oval area.
I think that developing the ability of abstract thought was an important and necessary step in the evolution of our intelligence. Our self awareness evolved gradually. Our cameras that once only acted as a window to the world, gradually turned to point directly at ourselves (see I am a Strange Loop by Douglass Hofstadter). Once this happened, an amazing feedback loop started and we became able to fully ponder ourselves. We could even ponder ourselves pondering ourselves. Abstract thought was born.
I offer the camera feedback visualization because it is the best analogy I've heard so far to get this point across. If you have never played with camera feedback, do it now. Plug a camera into your computer and open a video program. Point your camera in video mode to your computer screen. Aim to the center of the screen until you see the familiar endless tunnel, as if two mirrors are in parallel. When you get the angle just right, the feedback image will "lock in". You will know what this means when you see it.
It will initially look like a tilted series of windows, smaller and smaller, tilting successively into an endless hallway. If the hallway curves off to the side, straighten the camera until it is endless, tilt the camera and move closer and farther until it "locks in". The image will almost suddenly look more like a galaxy or sphere of light, or perhaps something else, rather than a series of tilted windows. It becomes something new and would be hard to reverse engineer if we hadn't just gone through the process of creating it ourselves.
At this point we naturally start to describe this new image in abstract terms like "galaxy" or "glowing sphere" other than using more complex and detailed language to describe each text window, degree of tilt and size difference, or perhaps, using a mathematical feedback loop (chaos theory) to describe the way it looked before it locked in. Our ability as humans to see a "galaxy" or "sphere" and feel comfortable with such macro descriptions - knowing full well it is really a result of a recursive chaotic process (video feedback) and not really a solid object at all - could be seen as a virtue, and in some cases, our downfall.
Surely, when we first became fully self-aware, able to ponder our ponderings, abstract thought was necessary in order to become who we are today - to ponder things like celestial orbits that we saw in the sky, to develop mathematics as a new language, to build structures beyond cave dwellings, to mark our territory, so on and so forth. And now we have shown the beginnings of an ability to reconnect with nature's roots by thinking about dynamical systems and fractals - in essence, chaotic processes.
But still, it is too easy to forget the dynamical and all-too-delicate chaotic processes that go into things like "morality" and "economy" and "weather". We tend to cram them in to abstract boxes and categories, multiply and divide them linearly, ignorant of the actual mathematical descriptions that would be much more true to the nature of the system. Our linear numbers and geometric boxes cause what was a robust chaotic system to become something else - something that can fly off into space like a rogue asteroid that was bumped out of its regular orbit. Thus, our potential downfall.
We have built the eiffel tower and many bridges based on fractal structures rather than linear shapes. We study fluid dynamics and even understand now that heart beats exhibit fractal patterns through time. Some of us (certainly not all) can grasp the complexity of the economy, understanding there are underlying and overlapping dynamical systems, all feeding back on each other in a strangely robust balance, like a tree that can go without water and sun, then come bouncing back when the circumstances improve.
I am willing to bet that in our future, more and more, we will develop chaotic techniques, perhaps even "growing" our homes as more stable structures that are in tune with the surroundings and able to repair themselves. We may use more fuel efficient chaotic orbits for spacecraft, which is already happening to a small degree, and any other number of unpredictable inventions.
We may - and should - eventually start teaching chaos theory in grade school classrooms, which only need involve algebra and feedback loops, allowing kids to develop a sense of what nature IS - simple seeds with simple processes embedded, all feeding back into themselves and nearby systems, resulting in complex and beautiful patterns that occur in everything we know.
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