I took a quick peek at dynamical systems theory on wikipedia today, following on from my last post about global warming and the CO2 hoax. Jokes aside, I think it’s a really important concept to come out of mathematics that we are only scratching the surface.
From wikipedia:
This branch of mathematics deals with the long-term qualitative behavior of dynamical systems. Here, the focus is not on finding precise solutions to the equations defining the dynamical system (which is often hopeless), but rather to answer questions like “Will the system settle down to a steady state in the long term, and if so, what are the possible attractors?” or “Does the long-term behavior of the system depend on its initial condition?”
And further down…
Chaos theory has been so surprising because chaos can be found within almost trivial systems.
The thing I love about chaos theorists is that they openly admit that we know very little. This humble standpoint is missing in large swathes of the scientific community where a humanistic behaviour seems to prevail. I think it is eminently scientific to, initially, stand in awe of what we don’t know (and what don’t know we don’t know). The study of chaos and related fields (think turbulence) are beautiful for this reason alone.
Read more about non-linear dynamical systems at wikipedia.
