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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. Science is becoming more rooted in the particular
circumstances of time and place.
Natural
processes are seen to be less smooth and linear than once thought;
life itself seems to thrive on non-linearity, in the
conditions of far-from-equilibrium systems. The scientist
Ilya Prigogine has produced insights into how some natural
objects are "self-organizing". Others have explored how patterns
in the exchange of information form a logical or symbolic
level of life known as "emergent computation".
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