CHAOS

Or witches' cauldron

In the beginning... Christa's thing

I was always interested in science, but I was disappointed in scientists because it looked to me back then, and then I'm talking approximately 1976, as if those scientists only cared about their own disciplines and own interests and, of course, money, and did not work together.

So, for a period of 10 years I looked away to find other thruths, and because I always had religion feelings, even as a child, I looked real deep into Jesus' eyes; at least I tryed. That religious trip took about 7 years, the last year as "a sabbath's year".

In my thirties I was able to reconsider everything and started to read about the history of science, and discovered "the chaos theory", or, also known as "the systems of live theory", allready 30 years old. Then I read "Chaos" from James Gleick a couple of times, and it made such an impact on me. It was like it touched me inside, even if I didn't understand all the technical terms or the mathematic calculations, it was if I understood with the heart, it felt so natural(!). All the things they said about liniair and not liniair, or fractals, or attractors, turbulence, stable and nonstable periods, it all fitted in my life and the world around me,in my thoughts, for me it was spiritual time, floating as a waterfall through my head.
I also studied nature (learned a lot from Discovery too) and looked for consolidation for my ideas and found them. I never wrote down which books I exactly read, or how much, not even the titles. I do not believe in stacking stuff, and I speak as a booklover, from the first day I learned to read, I even remember that day as a 5 year old kid. But I don't have to own books, I borrow them. Although my mind and my life is formed very much by books, bliss for our language and reading and writing shape our minds. And this page is about those ideas I want to share with you.

Trying to explain

Chaos is how nature works, and in the past ages the scientists but also the autorities and churches and ordinary peaple looked for laws to hang on to. And liniair systems were easy to solve, non-liniair not. Everything that didn't act as the laws they thought they found, they try to ignore, or marked as disobedience and even "bad". In labs scientists ignored the fact that not everything reacted as they expected, but also in real life, if there were people who didnot react to the laws as autorities expected, they were ignored or even punished or set aside as "crazy" or not adjustible, nonproductive elements. They let us believe we need rules, that freedom leeds to disorder, that we should be afraid of disorder.

Chaos is called the third scientific revolution. The relativity from Einstein made an end to the illusion from Newton about absolute space and time, and the quantumtheory made an end to the dream of Newton about a controlable measuring proces and chaos made an end to the ideal of deterministic predictebility.

In the sixties they discovered that simple mathematic equations (or comparisons) could be a model for systems who were as wild as a waterfall. Miniscul changes in the input could lead to overwhelming differences in the results, they called it "the butterfly-effect of Lorentz". This means that a butterfly in Japan can effect the wheather in the world. For me in real life it meant that one person can indeed change the world. Before that people could discourage me by saying that the world could not be changed, especially not by one man. But when you look into history you see that the big changes were made by a small group of people. Natural systems, like people are full with instable periods.If a system comes close to a situation where it's been before, it could stay arbitrary close to the next pattern. What would this mean for repeating patterns like incest or alcoholism? So it's a gift of nature we can be out of balance quickly, or we would be stuck forever in old patterns! It's a neccesity for the beauty of multilateral or versatility.

In a dynamic complex system (like us) there can be turbulence aswell as coherence at the same time. So it's no longer a contradiction, it happens the same time. Like in our lives there are areas who are coherent and other areas are turbulence, it also changes together. Chaos does not mean without order, but it means that because stability disappears, it gives room for new order. So we have stable and unstable periods, in real life aswell as in science. In biology, if one reaches a balance, it is dead.

And if you think your brains are a dynamic system in balance; I ask you not to think of elephants for some minutes, and you know your system is not in balance. Compare this with for example a divorce; at first when we marry we try to find a new order together with the one we love. For me, I tryed for 17 years to find a balance but our marriage stayed unsteady. When I divorced it gave a lot of turbulence for some time, but it also gave room for me to create new order. Or compare it with being overstrained, when you overstrain your boundaries, to make them move, which gives you the oppurtunity to change your boundaries. Aswell in science as in real life (maybe it's all the same!) it is known that a series of events contains a critical point, where small changes are enlarged or blown up. Chaos means that those points were there; always and everywhere -all-embracing.

Paradigma

Paradigma means starting point or decline- or conjugationseries. For me it means a new starting point to begin with in your thinking. A shift of paradigma is what scientists experienced by looking to turbulences in systems, and I had a shift of paradigma when I looked differently to the turbulence in my life.
I was used looking to trouble as if it wasn't right in my life, now I see trouble as new possibilities in my life. It also means that scientists found themselves bound up with that what they are looking at.

Small & big

Small and large scale are inextricably bound up with eachother, the same patterns repeat themselves. For example the wrinckles in our face and erosion of mountains, our brains and the walnut. Or look at our vains and then to the thunderlighting. So in so out, so big so small, so up so down, it's all bound up with eachother. The laws for creating patterns are universal

Attractors

You cannot see before you have the right metafor to describe it.
Attractors are at first points in space where everything stops, then appear the limited cycly (where everything oscillates), then the strange attractors appear.
Attractors increase the initial arbitrariness. Strange attractors function as mixers, they create unpredictability, increase the enthropy, which means blending or mixing, fall apart, break up, creates chaos.

Attractors develope, come into existance when 3 rhythms come together, to find a attractor you need 3 dimensions. Chaos is about creating information. In history all kind of governementforms have tried to oppress the turbulence in society, tried even to let it dissappear; but the same thing happend in physics, the naturalscience: IF they studied turbulence it was to try make it dissappear.

In real life I think attractors are the rebels, the ones who don't want to fit in systems; the ones who break the rules; who try new roads instead of the old. For ages and ages the rulers tell us those people don't fit in society, so we punish them or lock them up.
While I think to many rules frustrates our natural need to self-realization.

Fractals

Fractals are "living" borders in a dynamic system. In nature we see an explosion in diversity, not only organisms, but even in every day life, borders fall apart and become fractal. For all the people who were raised with clear borderlines, black and white ideas, this is a very scary developement, all the securities fall apart, to make room for more diversity.
That's why you hear our parents say: "the values and moral we knew, are gone!" And I say: "yes", one truth has made room for many thruths, we have not one value, it fell apart and showed there can be many values to live with.
Examples: Woodstock, the first big popfestival, made room for a diversity of festivals, all over the world. But even coca cola fell apart in many different tastes, and also fashion: at first it was clear, fashion was one thing, nowadays fashion means many things.

Fractals can be found anywhere, but often you have to "zoom in" in order to see them. If you look for example to clouds, or trees, if you are looking for borders in your life, you'll find it's not a simple line, as soon as you find a border, you'll always find at least 2 other borderlines. Fractals are about broken dimensions, fractal is distracted from the verb "frangere", witch means "broken". Fractals have similarity on every scale, like in the Mandelbrot collection. Fractals mean self-similarity, patterns inside patterns.

This fractal structure developed by nature is so efficient, that most of the tissue in our body is never more than 3 or 4 cells away from a blood-vessel.
I will come up with more examples for fractals in real life. But if you want to see how fractals look in a mathematique way, I will link you to "a fractals lesson". But I hope you'll be back here again, for more!