The new science of complexity

Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society

Joseph L. McCauley¹ 

[1] Physics Department, University of Houston, Houston 77204, TX, USA;

关键词: Complexity;    Simulations;    Laws of nature;    Invariance principles;   

DOI  :  10.1155/S1026022697000046

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Deterministic chaos, and even maximum computational complexity, have been discovered within Newtonian dynamics. Economists assume that prices and price changes can also obey abstract mathematical laws of motion. Sociologists and other postmodernists advertise that physics and chemistry have outgrown their former limitations, that chaos and complexity provide new holistic paradigms for science, and that the boundaries between the hard and the soft sciences, once impenetrable, have disappeared like the Berlin Wall. Three hundred years after the deaths of Galileo, Descartes, and Kepler, and the birth of Newton, reductionism appears to be on the decline, with holistic approaches to science on the upswing. We therefore examine the evidence that dynamical laws of motion may be discovered from empirical studies of chaotic or complex phenomena, and also review the foundation of reductionism in invariance principles.

【 授权许可】

Unknown