The Theosophist June 1990
The Merits of Chaos
Hugh Shearman
Accustomed as we are to think dualistically, we
are used to thinking of cosmos and chaos, order and disorder, as two
opposites
in perpetual contrast. Our assumption tends to be that order is a good
thing
and disorder a bad thing. If a good person finds himself in a
disorderly
room, he will try to tidy it and bring it into a state of order, bring
cosmos
out of chaos.
Order or cosmos is what the mind perceives as order. It is
what the mind
can understand. This was the great virtue that has been seen in the
work
of Sir Isaac Newton. For perhaps two and a half centuries we have
talked
of Nature's laws, and the Theosophical Society has to some extent been
based
on the supposition that there are such laws. "To investigate
unexplained
laws of Nature" seems to imply that nature can be brought within the
scope
of predictable laws.
Newtonian physics appeared to justify and round off this
conception. Alexander
Pope has written:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
In our present century, however, J.C.
Squire added the lines:
It did not last: the Devil, howling, "Ho!
Einstein did not fundamentally upset the notion that Nature has
reliable
laws. Indeed he came to its aid. The worrying thing had been that when
it
came to the very small or the vastly large, Newtonian physics did not
quite
seem to work. Einstein was able to explain how this was so and show
that,
though no longer quite in the reliable way we had thought, order was
still
order. And, for practical purposes, we can still manage most of our
affairs
wonderfully well without bothering about Einstein. We can even arrange
to
fly to the moon and back on a basis of Newtonian physics alone.
Latterly, however, a new science has been coming into being,
the science
of chaos, the science of certain things which just cannot be brought
into
a state of dependable order. This perception of things has been made
possible
because we now have computers which can plot the effects of a vastly
long
process or series.
It was once believed that every kind of physical movement is
predictable
except the behaviour of single particles or single quanta of light,
which
are subject to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Now, however, a new
science
and a new mathematics have been emerging which show quite a large
variety
of events are intrinsically uncertain and unpredictable. They are
liable
to be changed or put off course by quite small disturbances of order.
An example is provided by what happens if we hold a racket
and bounce a tennis
ball into the air. If we time our movements so as to keep the ball in
play,
it will rise into the air each time to the same altitude and come back
to
repeat the movement. But if the amplitude of the movement of the racket
is
increased, the pattern of the ball's behaviour is changed and it falls
into
alternating high and low shots, turn about. If the movement of the
racket
is delegated to a machine and given still further amplitude, an
increasingly
complex pattern occurs. Finally, with further amplitude in the strokes,
it
will become impossible to predict the pattern of the ball's behaviour.
No
data on weight, impact, timing, air density and so on, will enable even
the
most sophisticated computer to predict the continued behaviour of the
tennis
ball.
Another example emerges in a game of billiards or snooker,
played on an ideally
flat table. According to Newtonian physics, we should be able to
predict
the motion of a billiard ball after any number of collisions with other
balls
and the introduction of any number of impulsions of known thrust and
momentum.
But this is an illusion. Even after half a dozen collisions the
movement
of the ball will have become quite unpredictable. There are minute and
incalculable
variables, such as the gravitational effect exerted by people moving in
the
room where the experiment is being conducted, which will destroy the
predictability
that Newtonian expectations would demand. Predictability implies a
state
of isolation or separation which is nowhere to be found.
In a rather similar way the motion of fluids can be found to
develop to wards
a horizon of predictability beyond which particles will fall into
totally
uncorrelated behaviour. In this connection, an eminent emeritus
professor
of physics at Cambridge has commented that, in the long view, long
range
weather forecasting "is likely to remain in the province of sorcery
rather
than of science".
Another area in which predictions are attempted is in the
economy. In this
age of computers, economists have in recent years delighted in setting
up
models to show how things will work out. But it would now appear that
there
are far too many unrelated variables and instabilities to enable such a
model
ever to provide the reliable answers hoped for.
In particular the major economic factor of human nature seems
always to experience
the tiny but disruptive touch of chaos.
Each central area of apparent certainty fades away at its
edges into a peripheral
"beyond" of unpredictability. The variables may seem insignificant but
they
need to have some pattern of mutual relevance. Lacking this, a chaotic
situation
arises and prediction becomes impossible.
As we encounter more and more examples of phenomena which
cannot be contained
within predictable laws, we find that our way of thinking about cosmos
and
chaos has to be modified. We have tended to think of cosmos as a
condition
to which chaos has to be "reduced". We have thought that cosmos evolves
out
of chaos. But, in experience, it now appears that chaos can itself be a
natural
product of what we had thought was order. . Can it be that, not cosmos,
but
chaos is the true end product of what we do? Certainly we are not
living
in a predictable system.
Although it was long ago the contention of the Danish
philosopher and theologian,
Kierkegaard, that truth cannot be contained within a system, most
attempts
to expound a truth, or a supposed truth, are addressed to people who
are
accustomed to think that truth is necessarily part of a cosmos, having
the
quality of self-consistency which will produce an orderly scheme of
some
sort.
When earnest members of the Theosophical Society have felt
that they had
a Theosophy to communicate, they have usually tried to do so by
presenting
it in the form of a system. There is a large literature of modern
Theosophy
and much can be learned from it, but if we study it we are constantly
led
to some point where we have to take off into an unknown. Each orderly
presentation
of a Theosophy leads to some area of contradiction or incompatibility
with
every other presentation. Some people deplore this and feel that there
must
be one presentation which is correct an authoritative, providing a
criterion
with which any others must be brought into compatibility and conformity.
Yet in real life it appears that every orderly situation,
every cosmos, needs
a chaos out of which it can develop and then has to lead on to a
further
chaos. Out little orderly world has been rounded off by
unpredictability,
chaos, darkness. How else could there be the spontaneity of life, the
creativity
which alone gives life its zest, its worthwhileness. If cosmos,
predictability,
was all, then life would surely be only a dead machine.
There is a well known passage in early Anglo-Saxon literature
where the writer
says that human life is like the flight of a bird which comes our of
the
night through the window of a brightly lighted banqueting hall and then
flies
out again into the darkness through a window at the other side of the
hall.
Where it comes from and where it goes we do not really know. What we
try
to do is to project into the past and into the future the same type of
order
or cosmos which we think we know in this present.
But we have to remember that the order or disorder that we
find in things
lies in our perception of them. In quite practical everyday terms, our
extract
understanding of things lies in what we bring to them, the mathematics
with
which we approach them. We are well aware of simple incompletenesses of
definition
which occur in such common expressions as repeating decimals or the
square
root of two.
The physics of Galileo, which provided the base for the work
of Newton, was
grounded on the principle of choosing a single point of view from which
to
interpret the world. This is in accord with dualistic thinking in which
we
assume that there is always "I" and "not I", the observer and the
observed.
But a much older tradition than Galileo or Newton had already
dismissed the
exclusive validity of this epistemological assumption. The Yoga-sutras
of
Patanjali (i.41) refer to an order of consciousness in which the
knower,
knowledge and the known are experienced as one. But today's scientists
are
not usually yogis and have not entered upon this Advaitic experience.
They
have not yet found the perceiver, perception and the perceived to be
one;
but they have moved in the direction of that unitive view by moving
from
singleness of viewpoint to accepting a diversity of legitimate
viewpoints
which may appear superficially to be mutually incompatible. A well
known
example was the willingness to explore the same phenomena in terms of
waves
or of particles without waiting to reconcile the two approaches.
In this way, also, science has been moving out of the limits
of what we used
to regard as necessarily predictable functioning and mutually
consistent
laws and systems.
In the early years of this century there was much interest in
speculations
about a fourth dimension, a perception of space as being of such a
nature
that four straight lines could meet in it, each at right angles to the
other
three.
To illustrate what this would demand of our minds, analogies
and models were
offered of a two dimensional world, a place called Flatland, whose
inhabitants
could imagine only two dimensions. If there were people with
perceptions
so limited, then we three dimensional thinkers could play may kinds of
tricks
upon them and inflict upon them many forms of chaos and
unpredictability.
We could bring about miraculous appearances and disappearances by
moving
objects into their two dimensional world through our three dimensional
space.
Could it then be that if our thinking could perceive space in
a four dimensional
form, or if it could achieve some comparable transformation of
capacity,
then many of the characteristics of chaos would at a stroke be brought
into
a condition of cosmos? But then there would surely in time be
discovered
a further chaos beyond the frontier of that new cosmos.
In our individual lives, chaos is popularly known as the
unconscious. Or
the unconscious seems to be the natural manifestation of chaos in our
lives.
It can be very disconcerting. Yet how terrible it would be if there was
no
chaos in us. We should be bleak machines, sterile and uncreative.
People try to bring the unconscious under the control of the
conscious or
to incorporate it within the scope of the mind's rationality. But the
mind
cannot control the irrational because it looks to the irrational for
its
own motivation.
The evident move away from narrowly dualistic thinking and
from the unicentrist
system-building of the past makes possible a coming together of what
used
to be called the "two cultures", the apparently mutually exclusive
cultures
of the sciences and the arts.
Similarly Theosophy, a divine wisdom, cannot be a point of
arrival, a condition
of completeness, something perceptibly predictable in space or time,
accessible
to the dialectical exercises of the mind, the "slayer of the Real".
One may recollect the comment of the mystic who said that,
while others were
prepared to submit themselves to God's choice, he was ready to submit
himself
to God's chance.
Dr Hugh Shearman, a member of the General Council of the Theosophical Society, is a former Regional Secretary for Northern Ireland. He is the author of The Passionate Necessity, The Purpose of Tragedy, Modern Theosophy, etc. ..