Of chaos and order – Opposites or different perspectives?

Fractals – A Model of Chaos and Order

Fractals are, to me, an access to understanding the relationship of chaos to order. With fractals, what appears to be chaos at one scale of magnification can appear to be organized in some recognizable order at another scale of magnification. Alan Watts gave the example of a rope; the observing of a rope shows an organized series of fibers aligned in a particular way. If one were to look under a microscope, the appearance of the fibers would seem quite chaotic. Maybe our perception of order and chaos has more to do with how close we are to a situation, and from different perspectives one could see order in chaos and chaos in the order.

Chaos and Order in Nature

“Nature appears to be a hierarchy of many grades, corresponding to what the scientist calls ”levels of magnification.” Thus when we adjust our lenses to watch the individual cells of an organism we see only particular successes and failures, victories and defeats in what appears to be a ruthless ”dog-eat-dog” battle. But when we change the level of magnification to observe the organism as a whole, we see that what was conflict at the lower level is harmony at the higher: that the health, the ongoing life of the organism is precisely the outcome of this microscopic turmoil.” — Alan Watts

Could it possibly be,…

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher” ~Chuck Palahniuk

Life has a funny way of teaching us lessons. When there is something you need to learn, something that you need to work on, the same situation will continue to repeat itself until you either learn your lesson or find a healthy way of dealing with that particular issue.

An article from TinyBuddha:

“Find your pattern. Find your lesson.”  The key is to be alert. When you’re open to recognizing a pattern, you can change it by learning the lesson, and in doing so, change your life.

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/recognizing-our-patterns-and-learning-how-to-change-them/

Order and chaos

Hunting the Hidden Dimension – The Most Famous Fractal By John Briggs

“Largely because of its haunting beauty, the Mandelbrot set has become the most famous object in modern mathematics. It is also the breeding ground for the world’s most famous fractals. Since 1980, the set has provided an inspiration for artists, a source of wonder for schoolchildren, and a fertile testing ground for the science of linear dynamics.”

Interview of Benoit Mandelbrot conducted on April 24, 2005 by Bill Jersey and edited by Peter Tyson, editor in chief of NOVA Online:

“And do you see the world differently now because of those mathematical pictures, because of fractals?”

“I certainly see the world today differently from the way I saw it early on. And friends of mine who are mountain climbers tell me they see mountains differently now than before. People who just like to look out the window when they fly — they tell me that they see mountains differently now than before. They see an orderliness to mountains, piles upon piles of pyramids that before they did not see.”

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Originally written March 12, 2011

Next threads to pull:

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