“Ordered chaos” – does this sound familiar?
"While working on their model — a network of interconnected pendulums, or 'oscillators — the researchers noticed that when driven by ordered forces, the various pendulums behaved chaotically and swung out of sync like a group of intoxicated synchronized swimmers. This was unexpected — shouldn’t synchronized forces yield synchronized pendulums?
But then came the real surprise: When they introduced disorder — force were applied at random to each oscillator — the system became ordered and synchronized.
The thing that is counterintuitive is that when you introduce disorder into the system — when the (forces on the pendulums) act at random — the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order,” said Sebastian F. Brandt, a physics graduate student in Arts & Sciences and lead author of the study, which appeared in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters"In this way, we can see that order and chaos are interdependent, much like the principles of yin and yang. However, it appears that chaos is simply a higher octave of order that we are not yet attuned to. For instance, in the example given above, perhaps the first set of pendulums were being stimulated at slightly differing times and thus appeared to swing randomly. Furthermore, the second set of pendulums may have been pushed at a seemingly random pace, but in fact, were given the chance to synchronize with a larger force not accounted for in this study.
Fractals as patterns of complex systems
Fractals are systems composed of various complex agents and organisms. For example, an ant making an anthill don't have a grand plan to create a complex network of subterranean roads, but by the spontaneous efforts of different groups of ants--an anthill is born. Fractal systems rely on a diversity of organisms--and interact with the environment in which the system is nestled. Therefore, the terrain in which the ants build their home affects the home as much as the ants affect the terrain.
Consciousness Out of Chaos
Freud rebuked the Cartesian model of consciousness, by illuminating the presence of the unconscious for Victorian era Europeans. Because our habits and desires are mostly unknown to us, in the foggy, volatile realm of the id--our consciousness is always trying to moderate these terrible impulses. In this microcosmic way, consciousness is a result of chaos.
Comments
Post a Comment