Chaos Theory

A name given to recent wide-ranging attempts to uncover the statistical regularity hidden in processes that otherwise appear random, such as turbulence in fluids, weather patterns, predator-prey cycles, the spread of disease, and even the onset of war. Systems described as "chaotic" are extremely susceptible to changes in initial conditions. As a result, small uncertainties in measurement are magnified over time, making chaotic systems predictable in principle but unpredictable in practice.

An important development in chaos theory is the discovery of self-organising properties in certain systems, leading to the spontaneous development of greater complexity.

Contributed by: CTNS / Dr. Christopher Southgate