Complexity & Chaos by Roger White by Roger White

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”.