Complexity, Chaos and the Nature of Reality

By Wayne Brown
(A note to Len)

Our mathematical models (or our ability, in general, to predict or "understand" a system) must always be bound by an artificial "carving out" of the application domain of understanding
specification of scale - including the applicability of our tools to the scale we are working with
recognition of the precision we expect or the precision that is even theoretically possible.

This visualizes a "fractal" nature of reality (or our models of reality) up to a point, where models at one scale fail at a different one. In "Road To Reality" Penrose attempted to construct a framework for a smooth transition from one model to another (Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, for example). I'm afraid I remained unconvinced but partly because I'm too lazy or too stupid to follow his arguments in detail.

In a hypothetical University curriculum in this field (which still needs to be named), I think that scale, chaos, non-linear systems and complexity would form the core. I think it's time for us to abandon the idea that we can "understand" reality by drilling down to more and more "fundamental" aspects of it. We also need to abandon the idea that the world behaves according to neat mathematical "laws".

Sorry, Mr. Newton ...

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