– There is no “it”, but there is talk about “it”. Ultimately the talk about “it”, the pointing to “it”, is more fundamental to “it” than anything else, because it is the RELATIONS that are primary: thingness is a subset of relatedness. Relations are not between two “things” but are recursively self-generated between other relations – things fall out of relations (things = Earth, relations = Water). Relations themselves are a precipitate of tension between complementarily opposing potentials (Air). Relations are to opposing potentials as things are to relations. Opposing potentials are themselves a precipitate of the whole, and work alongside each other within the whole simultaneously. Each step from the whole is a step-down transformation, we could say that beginning with level N, we move to level N-1. Each level is pulled out of simultaneity by an act of distinction within the whole, of the whole, by the whole. A cascading of levels of distinction yields the ontology of “things”, and simultaneously an epistemology of “knowing” activity, which together yield the whole of cosmology.
– This can be approached in another way. We can begin first with a problem of the modern condition, made apparent most strongly by both postmodernism and deconstructionism. The problem is that language is (more…)
This notebook was created as a personal record of the 1999-2000 Goethean Studies program at Rudolf Steiner College. This unique course, conceived of and taught primarily by Dennis Klocek, is still being offered — it is now called Consciousness Studies. When I took the course, which was seven months long and met for about three hours every weekday, I liked to call it “Being Human 101”, because it offered some basic perspectives about being human that spanned the spiritual, psychological, and physical worlds in a very deep and coherent way.
There are certainly errors contained herein: it was often simply not possible to record more than the merest fragments of the vast pictures that awakened in the little Emerson classroom and flowed like honey across our minds. This record is like a six year old’s crayon rendition of a Michelangelo: it may contain something recognizable, but is no substitute for the real thing, which I encourage everyone to experience.
It is likely that the only people who will see this document are those already familiar with the course in one of its various incarnations. For you I hope that it re-awakens a commitment and enthusiasm for the hard and necessary work of spiritual transformation by connecting you to the feeling you had sitting in the uncomfortably cold room on uncomfortable chairs, listening to another mind-blowing morning lecture by Dennis: the feeling that you were exactly where you needed to be and wouldn’t trade it for anything.
For those who have not been able to take the course, this gives a tiny taste of some of the content that was presented in its 1999-2000 incarnation, and will hopefully inspire you to research the current, more highly refined and potent version.
For those who have found this page but have no idea what I’m talking about even though you’ve read this far, just flip through it like it was you long-lost friend’s photo album and see what tickles your fancy as you skim on by.
The movie Inception is the best “question reality” movie since the Matrix (ultimately the Matrix is better, in my opinion), and it raises many fascinating questions having to do with the differences between the two primary states of consciousness available to humans today: waking and dreaming.
This issue has been around for about as long as recorded history, and has formed a central piece of some very detailed philosophical considerations. It shows up in the 4th Century B.C.E. in the famous Taoist Zuangzi’s “butterfly dream”:
“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.”
It also forms a central part of Indian philosophy, especially advaita vedanta, which explores cosmological questions through the exploration of (more…)
Maybe you’ve had this experience: You are thinking about an acquaintance that you haven’t thought about in a long time and at that moment the phone rings. “What are the odds that it’s Jerry?” you think to yourself. And when it IS Jerry on the other line it seems somehow magical, amazing, beyond mere chance. Was this ‘just’ a coincidence, or is there something meaningful about this admittedly unusual event? Hopefully this is something you’ve wondered about before. The whole ‘coincidence’ thing is a fascinating realm to explore, and how we address it says much about our paradigm. What is interesting to me is the debate, such as it is(‘nt), between those who have a mathematical/statistical approach and those who have a spiritual approach (not that these are the only two camps, just that they represent a the major polarity).
For an excellent presentation of ideas about this very issue, listen to this RadioLab episode: Stochasticity. (If you have never met RadioLab before, you’re in for a treat!)
A mathematician will look at coincidence and point out how most people that find meaning in coincidence fail to understand the vastness of the potential field of events. In such a large set, not only is it not strange that coincidences occur, it is inevitable that they do; just a consequence of the numbers, nothing ‘special’.
But of course this completely misses the undeniable reality that such events ARE special by virtue of the fact that we actually experience them as such. What strikes me as unfortunately bizarre is that these two views, “just the numbers”/”full of meaning”, are CONTRASTED, when they are (obviously, it seems to me) complementary.
I would agree with the mathy people that such events are bound to occur, and that it is easily possible to overstate the importance of coincidences in a psychological sense. In other words, we should be careful with how we subjectively responds to coincidences; we should never let coincidence substitute for other means of addressing a phenomenon, such as rational thinking, heart-sense, discussion with friends, etc.; it should ADD to those other means.
I would also agree with the ‘meaning’ people that just because coincidences are inevitable (which is kind of funny, given the meaning of the terms), does NOT provide a sufficient basis for discarding any potential meaning that such events might have. Humans are meaning-making creatures. We can choose to make the meaning of a coincidence “this coincidence is meaningless” or we can make any other meaning from it. In fact, the very stochastic nature of coincidences is a solid reason why we SHOULD ‘use’ them to make meaning.
Take pendulum work, a popular modern divination technique. Here too we are looking at a stochastic system, which can vary within certain parameters… but the parameters are too delicate to be able to precisely control or predict, which is the point. Tiny hand tremors, gusts of wind, the rhythm of the pulse, and so forth, all can have effects on the non-linear motion of a pendulum. The fact that stochastic and physical processes underly and limit its potential motions (pendulums don’t usually point against gravity, for example) does not mean that the system is meaningless, because we–the human beings, meaning-makers–are always a part of the system. And this is the WHOLE POINT of divination, pendulums, and so forth: the taking of a stochastic process of sufficient simplicity and complexity that we can USE it to make meaning. Would any system of divination use a relatively non-variant process as its base? Not a chance. Systems in which differences can be maximized with little effort and within strict boundaries work best. With too few options the lack of variation doesn’t mesh well with the lived complexity of our experiences, (with the limiting case being a completely repetitive system that only gives one result, ex: “Will this rock fall upwards or downwards when released?”), while with too many options it becomes difficult to “find” meaning because we lose the basis for distinguishing between different states (too much ‘gray’ area, when the whole point of these kinds of techniques is to exit with some kind of new direction or idea that is clearly distinguishable from other options).
Does all this mean that the meaning made is “really” meaningless? NO. This is the point that the mathy people don’t quite get, because they discount the OTHER processes (which they generally know next to nothing about) which are involved in meaning making. Such processes, which are VERY difficult to get a hold of (in my view because these processes involve more than what can be accounted for by manipulation of the physical world), are sacrificed on the alter of what can be held in the Mind of Reason.
It makes complete sense for humans to use stochastic systems as the basis for meaning-making, because they have just the right features to allow the meaning-making parts of ourselves to activate. Imagination, the capacity to think “what if…?”, and a heightened sensitivity to difference all accompany the emotional and mental ‘opening up’ that is a central aspect of any transformation.
The issue about this kind of thing usually rests in the term “really”. Is coincidence “really” meaningless, or “really” meaningful? In other words, the question is usually taken ontologically, rather than epistemologically (it’s much simpler to think ontologically, hence psychological “projection”, while contrastingly the process of individuation has strong epistemic roots).
However, in regards to the ontological aspect of coincidence, it is simply not possible to “objectively” gather, using conventional means, an “answer”. The stochastic nature of the physical processes means that no individual coincidence can be actually predicted. Given a particular well-defined system, the fact that a certain individual coincidence willeventually occur with a specific probability can be known, but NOT when that coincidence will occur. The whole thing is very ‘quantum’ in this respect; there is always some inherent “fuzziness” beyond which we cannot penetrate directly, forcing us to rely upon stochastic (and other) techniques. This is precisely where the human being can enter the picture (“other techniques”), helping fill the gap that is left by the math, calling forth from us aspects of ourselves that prime us for change. As long as we don’t rely upon the techniques as substitutes for what otherwise requires harder thinking, they have a place. It is just as much a mistake to reify the meaning of such a system as it is its meaninglessness, ontologically speaking. If I throw some bones and then say “This is God’s Word for me”, and then psychologically close down all other options, I’m probably missing something, but if I use it to enhance the subtlety of my own meaning-making process, taking the ‘signs’ as spurs for my own development in the wider context of all the other meaning-making processes at work, then things probably won’t get out of hand.
Now, just because I am dodging the ontological question here doesn’t mean there is no ontological basis for “meaningful coincidence”. I’m just stating that (in my opinion) the vast majority of human beings don’t have access to the necessary capacities that would make this ontology available to consciousness; not that it can’t be. But my sense is that for those few individuals for whom such a capacity is awakened, it is precisely the divinatory techniques that are first abandoned, because much more direct (spiritual) routes to meaning-making are then available. In Steiner’s terminology this would be a transformation from Imagination to Inspiration and Intuition.
Coincidences can be BOTH stochastically necessary AND meaningful, in the full senses of both those terms.
A fellow student pointed out recently to me that compression algorithms are an excellent way to see feedback at work, and used the example of mpeg2 video compression. Here we have a system that utilizes multiple levels of abstraction and feedback in order to efficiently compress video data.
I will give you a picture or two and quote some relevant explanations on the process as a basis for the following discussion.
“The result of the MPEG-2 encoding process is a video stream. The basic unit of the stream is a “Group of Pictures” (GOP), made up of three picture types: I, B, and P. I-pictures (intra) are compressed using intra-frame techniques only, meaning that the information stored is complete enough to decode the frame without reference to any adjacent frames. For B (bi-directional) and P (predictive) pictures, however, only “difference information” (frame-to-frame changes) is stored, which generates much less data. These pictures can only be reconstructed by referring to the I-pictures around them, which is why the different picture types are grouped into GOPs.”
also:
“MPEG 2 provides for up to three types of frames called the I, P and B frames. The intra-frame, or ‘I’ frame, serves as a reference for predicting subsequent frames. ‘I’ frames, which occur on an average of one out of every ten to fifteen frames, only contains information presented within itself. ‘P’ Frames are predicted from information presented in the nearest preceding ‘I’ or ‘P’ frame. The bi-directional ‘B’ frames are coded using prediction data from the nearest preceding ‘I’ or ‘P’ frame AND the nearest following ‘I’ or ‘P’ frame.”
So you have completely self-contained frames, appropriately called I-frames. Then you have predictive-frames which contain information about DIFFERENCES ONLY, and which only have inputs from PAST I or P frames. But then you have bidirectional frames, which are constructed out of BOTH past and future frames (either I or P), and which also only encode differences.
This works because this type of compression operates on two levels simultaneously, the level of the FRAME CONTENT and the level of DIFFERENCES in frame content. The language of differences is a completely different language than that of the content, and constitutes (I think) a higher order of language from the type of language that can appropriately describe the content.
I’m only making this post because the content of the previous paragraph is generalizable to any system. Any system has a content-level which in some way encodes, describes, and utilizes a particular type of information (in this case, things like hue, lightness, and saturation). If the system never needed to interact with other systems (or itself in regards to this content), this would be enough. But as soon as any communication of or reflection on this information is needed, it becomes terribly inefficient to only keep to content-level languages. So in communicating or transferring that information from one epistemological system to another (a system for which the information can be of significance, i.e. produce a change), it is much more efficient to utilize a higher-order language whose primary function is to describe the content in a new way.
So this second-order language describes the description, or is information about the information. What can this second-order language contain? Essentially it contains information about DIFFERENCES in the content-level, which are not contained in the content-level itself. So I can’t describe the differences of hue, lightness, and saturation from one video frame to the next by using the language of hue, lightness, and saturation. The answer to the question: “What is the difference between a lightness value of 10 and 90?” is not itself a unit of lightness, it is a DESCRIPTION of lightness; you can’t use the answer directly and unmodified as information in the content-level system. You can’t tell your monitor to show a lightness value of “a difference of 80” DIRECTLY–you have to DECODE the difference back into the content-level language through a specific process.
What gets REALLY interesting, however, is when this kind of decoding has built in to it processes which modify the content-level data not just on the basis of the second-order language of differences (as in mpeg2 compression), but on the basis of a THIRD-order language of the difference of differences. This is like taking a description of the differences and feeding that information back into the system in a way that modifies the original information. So you have something like:
1) content-level (language of ‘raw’ data)
2) process-level (language of differences in ‘raw’ data)
3) meta-process level (language of differences of differences)
How far can this go? I have no idea; theoretically one can have an infinite number of levels, but practically I don’t think this is the case, and it has to do with the fact that there is a certain sort of separation between levels that has so far been assumed that is simply not the case. In other words, these different levels are complexly intertwined, and not capable of being separated. Each level is responsible for producing changes in other levels in various ways. The process-level, by encoding differences in the content-level, can produce changes in the content-level through appropriate decoding procedures. The same relation holds between the meta-process-level and the process-level. This also means that the meta-process level can drastically change things at the content-level. But additionally the content-level, by virtue of the type of information it contains, helps restrict the possible differences that can occur, and thus the possible ways of distinguishing differences in the process-level (it doesn’t make sense for a process-level language to encode differences about mood, temperature, or conductivity if the content-level doesn’t contain such information in the first place). So each level is like a bidirectional-frame in our video compression example, in which changes come both from ‘above’ and ‘below’.
What should be pointed out, however, is that there are SECONDARY effects which become possible with the utilization of any higher-order language. Any higher order language IS higher order because it can apply to multiple differing types and systems of data. A language of differences can be more or less strongly ‘coupled’ to a particular type of content. The closer the coupling the less easily the language can be used for descriptions of different types of data systems. The weaker the coupling, the more widely applicable the higher-order language can be to different data systems, but only at the cost of some potential loss of fidelity through the filtering out of SOME differences in favor of others.
Now here is where it gets even more interesting. The selective filtering of differences is another way of saying that each higher-order system embodies a particular epistemology. Languages about data, about differences in data, and about the differences of differences are all specific embodiments of epistemological frames. EVERY system has an epistemological frame: squirrels, lakes, crystals, and of course humans. The epistemological frame is the meta-context which admits or denies differences of a given class (temperature, color, quantity, mood, awareness…) and includes specific relations between various classes. But the epistemological frame is embedded within, arises from, and also determines the data available to the system — there is no ultimate ability to distinguish between frames and data – they each mutually produce each other.
What I distinguish distinguishes what I can distinguish. Differences differentiate my differentiating.
Epistemology determines the data available to a system for distinctions. The data available to a system determines the possible epistemologies that can make distinctions about the data (yielding capta. What is given determines what can be taken; what is taken then determines what can be given (the Latin root of data is ‘to give’, and of capta is ‘to take’).
There is no escape: we live in and create a world of paradox, which is probably enough for now.
One thing that struck me as interesting was that feedback, as a concept, seems to assume two things (and probably more): 1) step-wise time (and thus some kind of “state” in which a system can be identified, and thus 2) some kind of ‘levels’ within and between systems, in part based on their “state”.
So feedback, at least in the way that I’ve been thinking about it up to now, is this idea that state A of a system precipitates state B in some way, but that state B has non-trivial links ‘back’ to processes that help create state A. But of course because we are talking about the evolution of systems, this idea of ‘back’ may be better understood inversely, as ‘forward’, in the sense that there is a real distinction between state A, state B(sub-A), which is the state of system B-as-influenced-by-A, and then state A(sub-B,sub-A) the state of A-influenced-by-B-which-is-already-influenced-by-A…. And this goes on, so we have something more like a system-of-relations (S) at various points, which are distinguished by virtue of the feedback relations between its states A and B.
Here’s an attempt at a table explicating the pattern of what we mean by “feedback”:
S1 A
S2 B(A)
S3 A(B(A))
S4 B(A(B(A)))
S5 A(B(A(B(A))))
You can see the pattern unfolding infinitely — the thing is that when we think about it in this way, the pattern that is unfolding is one that does so on the basis of these ‘moments’ (S1, S2, …). But these moments are always arbitrary; there doesn’t seem to be any ontological significance to them outside of the context of their actual identification by someone thinking about cybernetics. Our knowledge of the system becomes apropos when we question it, when a need for knowledge arises… and not otherwise.
If this is true, it’s kind of misleading to have the idea of “a system” that exists “in a state” and that this state influences some other system’s state, and so forth. It’s too reductive… and it seems to fall prey to Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (Others familiar with quantum physics, and specifically the Einstein-Bohr debates may see some parallels with this line of thinking.)
When thinking about TIME and evolving systems, we run into some serious complexities, because different information flows through a given portion of a system at different rates depending upon the nature of that part of the system and the nature of the information being carried. Heat flows at one speed through a specific material, at another speed through another material. Information carried by light moves still differently, as does linguistic meaning, different types of sensation, etc. etc. etc.. Just about every ‘channel’ of information has its own unique set of variables in this regard, so there is no way to divvy up a given system into “state A” or “state B” with complete certainty, because at any arbitrary snapshot point, an important bit of information from one part of the system might be ‘on its way’ but not yet resulting in any modification elsewhere in the system in a significant way — in other words feedback has an analog character. We can create digital systems in which feedback appears to operate step-wise, but this is always an oversimplification… (perhaps not if we get to the quantum level, but even then I have a suspicion that something, perhaps not either analog or digital, has a role to play in what is now left out of the loop entirely, i.e. is attributed to ‘randomness’). In any case any macroscopic digital process always (?) includes analog processes (on higher and lower levels). The point is that it is misleading to speak of “states” at all.
So what? Well, our very ability to speak about feedback seems to presuppose a conceptual reliance upon “states”. Hmmmmm. What if we got rid of “states” and started to look more at the processes? What if we slipped out of the subtle reification of “statehood” and into the flowing of flows? The processes of processes? It seems then impossible to consider anything but the whole; everything is a whole, evolves-as-whole, is-always-whole-ing, and never ‘just is’.
For example in an old-style mercury thermostat, the state changes from “on” to “off” to “on” again. The way it does this is through a process of feedback between the temperature of the room and the curvature of a bi-metallic strip. When the temperature is too cold (given a specific calibration point to begin with), the bimetallic strip curves in on itself, causing mercury (a conductive liquid)to fall to one side of its containing vial, where it closes an electrical circuit, making the heater go on. When the temperature is warm enough, the bi-metallic strip expands and causes the vial to tilt the other way, so that the mercury ends up in the other side of the vial, breaking the circuit and causing the heater to go off. Wash, rinse, repeat, over and over.
This is the ‘classic’ case of a feedback system. The system of the room+thermostat includes a feedback “mechanism” by which information ABOUT the “state” of the system is influential in determining the BEHAVIOR of the system. But there is something arbitrary about thinking of the system as composed of a room and a thermostat. We could divide things up into any number of different configurations, which would give slightly different perspectives on the whole. For example we can distinguish the temperature of different volumes of air, the internal components of the thermostat, the volume of air in the heating ducts and their placement, etc. “The thermostat” and “the room” are just cognitive shortcuts for more complex interrelations that, on the one hand, can be usefully summed up by such shortcuts, but which on the other hand deflects awareness from the process by which the making of the distinctions occurs, and its interactive, contingent, on-going nature. This is a general issue that crops up around epistemology.
Exploring a bit further, it would then seem that if we take such an idea to heart, it becomes much more difficult to speak of “levels” that are clear and distinct (to borrow a pithy and dangerous phrase from Descartes)–for the basis for any such distinction is some clarity about difference, and the basis for clarity is the distinction of difference. Alchemically, this is like the operation of precipitation, where a flowing, dissolving, ever-changing substance becomes punctuated by moments of particularly which separate themselves off from the activity of being-in-process with the rest of the solution. Identity becomes not only possible but fitting: here we have the formation of a crystal. It is here, it is this size, it is moving like this, it is not any of these other equally separate and identifiable crystals. (In terms of the alchemical language of process, this is the Earth element at work.)
In other words, the concept of feedback works well by virtue of its implicit reliance upon the tendency to make distinctions in complex wholes: this “part” of a system and that “part” of a system, this “state” at one time and some other “state” at another. Such distinctions may represent an a-ontological punctuation of difference within a field of activity that admits–without the activity of the distinguisher–of no such intrinsic difference. That is to say, distinctions have a certain amount of… freedom to them. Our distinguishing of one state or part of a system may not be rooted in some kind of ontologically independent “reality” which can, on its own hold up the validity of that distinction. Such validity always requires the situated contextuality of the distinguisher. (In terms of the alchemical language of process, this is the element of Water at work).
One can think of the thermostat/room system as a homeostatic one, which brings the room temperature towards some specific target through negative feedback. But this ‘stasis’ is somewhat illusory; it is accomplished by continual change. No matter how the system is constructed, it is change that creates the stasis. So it’s more accurate to think of the thermostat/room system as evolving around a cyclic attractor, where the temperature regularly fluctuates above and below a certain average (the ‘target’ temperature). It is also the stasis that creates change; the curling and uncurling of the bimetallic strip can only occur if the ambient temperature has some aspect that is constant (in this case, that the temperature STAYS above or below the target value–you’ll notice that this is a case of higher-order constancy, a constancy that is possible on the basis of change that maintains a difference).
So we sometimes make a distinction about levels: on a ‘higher’ level the system is essentially constant, while on a ‘lower’ level it is continually in flux. But again these are cognitive shortcuts for interweaving processes which do not admit of such self-distinction. The ‘levels’ are identified BY us FOR us. Just as the identification of ‘states’ is contextually contingent and not necessarily ontological, so it is with the identification of ‘levels’.
This is not to say that our distinctions are completely unguided or arbitrary–because we can’t overlook the fact that we ourselves are involved in any system by virtue of our interaction with it. Even if we are ‘just looking’ at a system, we cannot but help look with eyes that see only particularities that evolve with our ability to distinguish them. Even our seeing is cybernetic, involved in recursive looping between the ‘out there’ and the ‘in here’. The seeing is not either ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’, but partakes of both aspects, being guided by outer processes and inner processes simultaneously, and which affects the ‘seeing system’ in multiple ways, some of which may be inconsequential, and some of which may make all the difference in the world.
A response to the question: “How is chaos theory non-determinant?”
This is an interesting question, because I think it might normally be asked in the opposite way: “How is chaos theory DETERMINANT?”, because chaos theory is, well, chaotic, so it seems more logical to connect chaos with non-determinancy than with determinancy.
So to explore the question that wasn’t really asked: The techniques which we have discovered that allow us to analyze systems that exhibit chaotic behavior are completely deterministic: they are mathematical in nature, having the feature of acting like an Ouroboros, where the output becomes the input in a recursive cycle. We can start with even very very simple systems, and show how chaotic behavior results when the system evolves, when that system’s evolution takes place in ways describable by this type of recursive mathematics (not all systems are so describable). Really the MATH isn’t the thing here, it’s rather the RECURSIVE PROCESS, RULE, or PROTOCOL that is important. The math is just a really nice and clean way of expressing the essence of what happens when a system evolves by following a recursive rule.
So chaos THEORY is determinant in that the rules which it utilizes to describe evolving systems have the potential to be calculated EXACTLY from iteration to iteration. In other words, if we had a computer that could deal with an infinite number of digits we could theoretically pinpoint the next iteration describing the state of a system at the next moment with complete precision. BUT, there are serious caveats to this when applied to anything beyond the purely mathematical formulations themselves. REAL systems may be more or less calculable, more or less complex, and more or less willing to submit to the precision capable in theory. The determinacy of chaos theory is therefore more like a theoretical determinacy, having a dubious ontological status. I won’t get into the very crazy and amazing philosophical arguments that whirl around such things, to your immense relief. Suffice it to say that THE WORLD IS MYSTERIOUS, and we have to be careful when dealing with the connection between our thinking and our observing.
The ‘problem’ with chaos theory is that we can’t observe closely enough to know where to START our calculations, so we ALWAYS know that they are ‘wrong’ when dealing with the actual observable world. This is that ‘sensitive dependence upon initial conditions’ thing again: there is no lower limit at which a difference does not potentially make a difference, even ALL the difference. In other words, even the smallest possible change cannot be ignored. The thing is that we can never know ahead of time when such a difference may be either influential or inconsequential – we have to let the system evolve in actuality in order to find out. We can’t calculate the future states of the system (which are theoretically determined!) with much success because (depending upon the system’s complexity and initial state) as soon as we get a few iterations under our belts our calculations tend to diverge from other initial states that were infinitesimally close to the one we are actually calculating. So our results tend to be so far off from what we will later actually observe that we start calling the whole thing a theory of CHAOS, even though every step in the process is ‘determined’; hence “deterministic chaos”. So even today a large bulk of weather predictions are based not off of complex theories of high pressure and low pressure zones, temperature gradients, moisture content, and such, but rather simply off of a comparison with past ACTUALITIES. Predictions START with a comparison of the averages for a particular place for that same day in previous years, because this is often a better predictor than if we were to try and start with vastly incomplete current data. The best predictions, of course, blend the two methods, but you’ll notice that nobody (okay, this isn’t true, but such people have completely different methods for prediction) is giving weather predictions much beyond a week or two at best. This isn’t just a fault of our weather theory, but is a consequence of the RECURSIVE NATURE OF NATURE.
So what is interesting is that our understandings from quantum physics put us in the strange position of having to admit that WE CAN NEVER HAVE PERFECT KNOWLEDGE of the state of any system – no matter how simple. So we can’t even hold on to some ‘theoretical’ exactness that would be possible if only we had better instruments, or more complete observations. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A COMPLETE OBSERVATION — at least in the sense of what had been the promise and holy grail of physics before the s**t hit the fan with relativity, quantum mechanics, Gödel, and chaos theory. It turns out we live in a dirty universe, which is much more crazy and mysterious than we had imagined or hoped.
But what is key here is that chaos is not a result of linear progressions, but is more or less inherent (in systems with almost any level of complexity) when the Ouroboros steps in and finds its tail: recursion yields chaos. I find this fascinating, because so many (all?) parts of the natural world utilize recursion as a technique — particularly in the living realm, but even in the purely mineral realm as well. Whenever nature comes up with a new process it tends to repeat itself if the conditions allow it. This repetition can easily become recursive, where some aspect of the process acts upon or is acted upon by some other aspect of the process. When this happens you usually either get a complete breakdown or cessation of the process (a sort of suicide process, sometimes through growth), or you get emergent complexity, homeodynamic systems, self-regulating organization, and the basis for higher-level recursions.
At the same time, every recursive process is — although perhaps potentially infinite — embedded in a contextual situation that provides limits and boundaries to the system’s evolution. Sometimes it happens via a law of physics, sometimes as a consequence of mathematical relations in the context of physical laws (as in the increase in volume with the cube and the surface area with the square), and sometimes it’s just the seemingly contingent facts of context (it doesn’t rain that year, the food runs out, the salinity changes slightly, and so forth). The point is that these contextual limitations are not usually a part of the chaotic models proper. Rather, the chaotic models become themselves modified by through a corresponding synthetic analysis of contextual facts. The Mandelbrot fractal is what it is because it does not have to evolve in the context of anything REAL; it is an ideal form through and through. This is why we only find approximate fractals in nature, forms which approach the self-similar repetition of mathematical models. But rather than say that nature’s forms approximate mathematical laws, maybe we should say that our mathematical laws approximate nature’s forms. Maybe the laws we use to think about these forms are one of the ways that nature involves itself in a sort of grand recursion; the mathematical laws are like a high-level iteration of a process which at a lower level is much more messy and dynamic, but now has the benefit of taking place completely within the consciousness of a human being, thus allowing it to reach a new level of emergent complexity, i.e. the laws of emergent complexity themselves.
So chaos THEORY is determinant in that the rules which it utilizes to describe evolving systems have the potential to be calculated EXACTLY from iteration to iteration. In other words, if we had a computer that could deal with an infinite number of digits we could theoretically pinpoint the next iteration describing the state of a system at the next moment with complete precision. BUT, there are serious caveats to this when applied to anything beyond the purely mathematical formulations themselves. REAL systems may be more or less calculable, more or less complex, and more or less willing to submit to the precision capable in theory. The determinacy of chaos theory is therefore more like a theoretical determinacy, having a dubious ontological status. I won’t get into the very crazy and amazing philosophical arguments that whirl around such things, to your immense relief. Suffice it to say that THE WORLD IS MYSTERIOUS, and we have to be careful when dealing with the connection between our thinking and our observing.