[MD] Crystallising Chaos.

[Case]

Mark: Hello Case.
The quantitative values mathematicians hold in their experience are
patterns of static intellectual quality which form relationships that are
aesthetic.
The pattern 6 does not stand alone for the mathematician; 6 is a series of  
aesthetic relationships: 2 x 3, 12/2, a geometric shape with internal angles
of 360/6 degrees, the square root of 36, 2/3 of 9, one tenth of 60, the
number of  equilateral triangles in a hexagon, a component in any variety of

geometric  progressions, etc...
Numbers are moral only in their relationships, and no wonder a 90 degree
triangle is called a, 'right' triangle because a wall built at that angle to
the ground is a good wall; one could think of a wall like that having
attained a, 'sweet spot?'

[Case]
Van Gogh's "Irises" sold for $49m. 
B-52H Stratofortress bomber cost $42.9 million each
George Soros gave $50M to an Anti-Poverty Project
Judge Tosses $50M Award in Vioxx Case.

These are all statements about esthetic and moral values. Isn't economics
where value is quantified? And come to think of it, what could be more
chaotic than economics? ...would love to find a sweet spot there.

Mark: Fair enough.
As you say, the term value is, 'Ambiguous' so if we say, 'values which do  
not value structure' we've said enough?
This may even be a formal definition of chaos itself?

[Case]
Actually what is cool about chaos is that includes the order and the
disorder at the same time. Order is simply one form disorder can take. 

The Great Pyramid just dissipates more slowly than a whirlpool in a toilet
bowl.

[Mark]
Non-linear dynamics, as far as i understand it, suggest there are as  yet 
unacknowledged structures at work.

[Case]
Nonlinear dynamics looks at how order emerges from disorder and how it
returns to disorder. It is a bit like primes which are infinite in number.
Or the irrational numbers which are infinite qualitatively and
quantitatively. Simple relationships produce complex results and higher
order relationships.

"Research in the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics concerns complex dynamics,
instabilities, chaos, and pattern formation in systems driven far from
thermodynamic equilibrium."
- From the homepage of The Center for Nonlinear Dynamics
University of Texas
http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/


Mark: You know how it is Case?
In promoting a new paradigm it can be useful to highjack previous metaphors

and use them for one's own ends?
The arrow of moral evolution is stolen straight from the arrow of time or
thermodynamics.
I agree that the path of least resistance is important. The way i look at it
is this: It's a question of balancing things up such that control becomes as

light as a feather.
DQ seems to get in on the act when massive forces are balanced in such a way
as to cancel each other, and then the slightest touch cannot only move them
both, but do so with elegance and grace as if they were not there at all.
In this way huge forces are used to paint delicate images.
Make any sense?

[Case}
Very nicely said. This is in the spirit of Pirsig's observations on the
carbon atom that you mentioned early on. But what do you call it when the
dice fall the other way and Godzilla stomps on Bambi.