[MD] Chaos

[PhaedrusWolff at carolina.rr.com]

Hi all,

Case) Feel free to jump in anytime. I have forgotten an awful lot 
about this Chaos
stuff so any help would be appreciated.

Chin) You’ve probably forgotten more than I ever knew. You’re doing a 
fine job, and I have just learned to accept what chaos tells us, and 
that is pretty much that things, including our understanding change. 

Ian said to Ham,
> You said to Case
> "the assertions you and Chin have made about chaos contradict the
> universal meaning of this term."
> 
> Contradict is not the right word.
> The "universal" meaning you have in mind is largely a theoretical
> concept - the idea of "total chaos" (defined by the Greeks ?)

Chin) Total Chaos may have been what Marsha was referring to, and this 
is not what I answered to. What I answered to was to more modern Chaos 
Theory beginning with Poincare and still with us in quantum chaology. 
Pirsig made mention of Poincare in ZMM, and Phaedrus’ thoughts about 
how a multitude of hypotheses could grow from one experiment. He 
called this science creating “scientific chaos.” Maybe I’m too simple 
minded, but it made sense to me, or maybe I too am a little insane. 
Science is not immune to favoring one hypothesis over another any more 
than theology is of favoring one book of the bible over another. With 
probabilities, the physicists seem to be able to make enough sense out 
of chaos to continue with their experiments (and once again, no I am 
no physicist). 

Just simply stating as Poincare did with math, there are no scientific 
facts, and you cannot draw from all the information, data and 
hypotheses all that can be measured, tested or considered leaves us 
open to new discoveries as we do not place our prejudices on what we 
might otherwise consider ’Fact’. Even if you could, measure, test and 
consider all, there would still be the selection prejudices of 
discarding that which does not make sense in our current 
understanding. Chaos Theory serves a purpose. 

I didn’t even consider any validity to Total Chaos, but then again 
that may be my own preconceived prejudices. 

Chin