DETERMINISM, RANDOMNESS AND CHAOS
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 896 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
The chaos concept leads to a deep questioning of the traditional- and absolute- notions of determinism and randomness, whose relation has now become quite blurred. Formerly, in the words of J. GLEICK: “Either deterministic mathematics produced steady behavior, or random external noise produced random behavior. That was the choice.
- “In the context of this debate, chaos brought an astonishing message: simple deterministic models could produce what looked like random behavior. The behavior actually had an exquisite fine structure, yet any piece of it seemed indistinguishable from noise” (1987, p.78-79).
Through chaos, randomness seems to become embedded within a broad determinism, or put in the opposite way, in complex systems, a kind of determinism seems to emerge from randomness. Either way, determinism and randomness become closely intertwined.
The embedding is quite clear in the WEIERSTRASS function for example, or in the fractal expressions of chaos.
However, these formalizations are still mathematical models and one may wonder if they fully contain the interrelations between determinism and randomness. For the time being, the subject must remain open.
See also
ergodicity