Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Sarah Schnellbacher's picture

Chaos Theory and Destiny

Both your post and your name OrganizedKhaos remind me of a section of a Contemporary Physics course I took in  Spring 2010 with Professor Mark Matlin on Chaos Theory. During our discussion group we talked about how Darwin doesn't really attribute evolution to chance but says rather that chance is really just our own ignorance on all the contributing factors. In my Contemporary Physics class we looked at iterations and how they created fractal patterns. At a certain point the fractal patterns would become so complicated that the results of the iteration began to look entirely random, but really the results did follow a pattern; the pattern was just too complicated to appear to us as a pattern. Darwin says basically the same thing. He attempts to give simple observable examples in which as many variables as possible are controlled but fully accepts that nature is a chaotic system. There is a pattern as to who will survive and why organisms posses their current traits, but the infinite number of variables in nature make it impossible for us humans to ever understand the pattern. I like to think therefore that I do have a destiny in this sense but it is shaped by my free will in choosing which path to take at each node of a giant fractal pattern that is my life.

Image: http://www.enchgallery.com/fractals/fractal%20images/orange-tree2.jpg

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
1 + 8 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.