Chaotic Systems Quotes

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.

Who then can calculate the path of the molecule? how do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand?

Nature doesn't feel compelled to stick to a mathematically precise algorithm; in fact, nature probably can't stick to an algorithm.

We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations.

As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

Chaos and ineptitude are anti-human; but so too is a superlatively efficient government, equipped with all the products of a highly developed technology.

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair.

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.

We get to the point then with modern science where you could almost say that modern science is the art of describing those systems so crude in their structure that they are not subject to temporal variables.

Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice.

Chance is the nature of our universe. [...] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.

There are two worldviews in thriller writing: the paranoid view, like Chuck Logan's, that everything is inside a large clockwork. I like those books; they're intricate and thought out, but my view is that everything is chaotic and stupid. Chaos reigns, and civilized people do what they can to hold it back.

If you take your thumb and your index finger and look right where they meet - go ahead and do that now - and relax your hand, you'll see a crinkle, and then a wrinkle within the crinkle, and a crinkle within the wrinkle. Right? Your body is covered with fractals.

The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic," Ben said, leaning on the gate. "Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure." "They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek. "No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality.

I see my tweets as a current joining a bunch of other currents in the world's craziest ocean.

It's so much more interesting to study a ... damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that's too civilized.

We're part of the unfolding world, surfing the chaotic waves

In little localized pockets, the universe is capable of building some beautiful complexity.

The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often.

Basins of attraction, of self organization, show up as well in our complex social environment, in human organizations. Here again, while we cannot predict the result of any given input, we can say that it will likely fall within one of several areas.

I have been interested in phenomena involving complexity, diversity and evolution since I was a young boy.