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Apparent ChaosThe concept of chaos (disorder) is something that man knows, but has little understanding of. Disorder is so basic to understanding and reality, it's a concept -- that is, essentially implicit in everything. The brain perceives order but implicitly uses chaos (e.g. noise) as background. "Apparent Chaos" is "chaos," but acknowledges that chaos implies order. Without some order, there is no chaos (disorder). However, once the concept of chaos is examined, one realizes that there are kinds of disorder, in particular, 1) matter of degree, and 2) matter of kind. "Continuous" disorder (degree) and "discrete" disorder (kind) are instantiations of the first dichotomy of concepts. The concept of continuous disorder (order) is equivalent to the notion of a "field" or the gestalt notion of background. The concept of discrete disorder is the equivalent to the notion of "objects" which constitute either the background or foreground in the gestalt. "Noise" is the dynamical view of this phenomena, but the particular kind of noise is not specified, whether it be gaussian, normal, power law (so-called "scale free"), or any other form of distribution.To have Disorder, there must be Order. Disorder is entangled in order. The order surrounds and defines the disorder, and the disorder surrounds and defines the order. The disorder is apparent, but underlying order can eventually overtake and engulf that disorder. Moreover, the underlying order must have disorder at a lower level of complexity.
Jim Crutchfield illustrates the computational power of Order and Chaos. More the order, less the computational power (a measure of complexity) and more the chaos, less the computational power. At the extremes, pure order (no change) and pure disorder (all change) computational power is the same, zero. Absolute Order is the same as Absolute Disorder. |
![[Complexity]](images/CvH.gif)