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A bluffer's guide to chaos theory 4
July 25th 2006 06:01
Today's post will deal with the history of chaos theory. It is the fourth part of my bluffer's guide to chaos theory.
In the first post we discussed how Edward Lorentz helped form the field, by showing that small changes in initial conditions can have large impacts. This idea, which has been called the butterfly affect, was a major change of viewpoint for many in the scientific community.
The next developments in chaos theory came when scientists and mathematicians began to investigate turbulence, an event that changes ordered motion into chaotic motion, and nonlinearity, which is a property of events which are not continuous. Research into these issues established much of chaos theory.
In the 1970's chaos was expanded beyond its original scope, with Robert May's work on biological systems. A major development of his was the discovery of period doubling, where the time taken to return to the systems original state is doubled. This leads to the onset of chaos.
The 1970's also saw the development of the idea of phase space, as well as Benoit Mandelbrot discovery of fractals. Both of these topics greatly expanded the tools available to chaos theoreticians.
Another major development in chaos theory was Feigenbaum's discovery of order in chaos and order deriving from chaos. This opened a whole new area for scientists to explore.
Well that is a brief history of chaos theory, I hope you found it useful.
Adam Bales
In the first post we discussed how Edward Lorentz helped form the field, by showing that small changes in initial conditions can have large impacts. This idea, which has been called the butterfly affect, was a major change of viewpoint for many in the scientific community.
The next developments in chaos theory came when scientists and mathematicians began to investigate turbulence, an event that changes ordered motion into chaotic motion, and nonlinearity, which is a property of events which are not continuous. Research into these issues established much of chaos theory.
In the 1970's chaos was expanded beyond its original scope, with Robert May's work on biological systems. A major development of his was the discovery of period doubling, where the time taken to return to the systems original state is doubled. This leads to the onset of chaos.
The 1970's also saw the development of the idea of phase space, as well as Benoit Mandelbrot discovery of fractals. Both of these topics greatly expanded the tools available to chaos theoreticians.
Another major development in chaos theory was Feigenbaum's discovery of order in chaos and order deriving from chaos. This opened a whole new area for scientists to explore.
Well that is a brief history of chaos theory, I hope you found it useful.
Adam Bales
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