Ken Norton wrote:
>
> There is a good argument that "Chaos Theory" is just plain bad science. It's
> a handy way of explaining away anomalies that haven't been adequately
> researched. For example:
>
> A traffic study that shows that 5000 vehicles pass a spot in the road every
> day. This is determined by number of vehicles passed in a sample period
> extrapolated out. However, on every Friday night during the fall, there is a
> burst of traffic of an additional 2000 vehicles.
>
> "Chaos Theory" is used to explain away this discrepency as just "one of those
> things".
>
Either one of my legs is now longer than the other or you completely
misunderstand what Chaos Theory is. The name is unfortunate, as it will
tend to draw such responses. Nevertheless, it doesn't say of apparently
inconsistent systems behavior that it's "just one of those things". It
is not just theoretical musings, but also practical science that makes
meaningful predictions about systems behavior.
A theory that said of your above example what you posit should be called
"Stupidity of the theorist Theory".
> "True Science" will attempt to figure out why this occurs and accounts for
> it. In my example, the 2000 vehicle burst is caused by vehicles coming and
> going to the high school football game.
>
You don't need Science for that. It's at most a simple engineering
problem, and really only one of common sense. It certainly doesn't call
for anything like application of Chaos science.
> I've obviously simplified my example, but I maintain that Chaos Theory is
> poor science and a way of saying "There is something weird going on here that
> I haven't quantified yet."
>
I disagree. I believe you are mocking what you don't understand. I could
go on, but suggest that you take a look at Chaos - The Making of a New
Science, by James Gleick. You could scan the short section from the last
two pps of pg. 39 to the middle of pg. 45 in a library or bookstore.
Although not representative of the breadth and depth of the concepts, it
illustrates how non-linearities make even seemingly simple systems
unpredictable through conventional analysis.
Moose
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