How can they co-exist?
Why shouldn’t they?
I don’t know. My limited knowledge suggests that they go in different directions.
I don’t really see what the problem is, infact chaos theory gives insights into populations, esp. populations of hunters vs. prey, which exhibt chaotic behaviour.
Do not get the words ‘unpredictable’ and ‘random’ mixed up, chaotic systems are completely detirmintistic.
Chaos theory relates to systems wherein later measurements are highly sensitive to initial conditions, such that infinitessimal differences lead to very different later configurations, usually via a strongly nonlinear process.
Evolution is the fact that species die out and other species which weren’t there before take their place. The Theory of Evolution proposes mechanisms for this speciation.
Not only the two anything but mutually exclusive, I would suggest that since the climate and its associated environmental changes are reliant on chaotic effects, chaos is necessary for evolution.
I read:
Chaos theory= breaking down, falling apart, dis-order over time. I realized that this was probably an over-simplified definition.
Evolution = adaptation to changing environments. Random genetic changes and how they might or might not propagate.
The “Chaos” that might cause random genetic changes, I can understand, but what about the evolution of adapting to changing environments?? What about the propagation of those random genetic changes??
Evolution consists of a random element (mutation) and a non-random one(selection) - a bunch of random mutations cause a degree of variety in a population and that segment of the population (if any) for which the mutations happen to be favourable, even if only slightly, enjoy a statistically better rate of reproductive success, so the favourable mutations stick around.
Well, that’s an oversimplification of the concept of “chaos” to the point of falsehood.
SentientMeat’s description is very apt. As a concrete example, think of the weather. The weather and trying to predict it is a perfect example of chaos theory at work; the weather is obviously not a truly random thing. However, the sheer number of inputs into it - the heptillions of air molecules, the solar energy, all that crap - is such that the system can never be perfectly measured. That’s why they can’t accurately predict the weather too far head. We know it’s deterministic, but a purely deterministic evaluation is impossible. Chaos theory allows us to examine such things.
Look, whether or not evolution HAPPENS is simply not an issue. It happens, and human being have seen it happen. It’s observed fact. Given that it happens, we need to construct theory to explain it. We’re a long way from nailing that down perfectly.
The “chaos” in the theory isn’t breaking down or falling apart, but unpredictability. The state of a non-chaotic system can be predicted at any time in the future without any concern for the way it reached that time, while a chaotic one has to be watched through the whole interval to see how it ends up. A small change in the starting conditions of a chaotic system gives an unpredictable change in its final condition.
Evolution is chaotic because it’s too complex to tell in advance exactly how it will come out. Even if we don’t have any mutations after we start, there are many relevant factors that affect each other in complicated non-linear ways, so a tiny change in the starting conditions can make the final state unpredictable.
paul, I think the word you are looking for is not chaos but entropy: Suns burn out, explosions create disorder, that kind of thing. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an enclosed system entropy (“disorder”) can only increase.
It is a creationist fallacy that evolution violates this law: **The Earth is NOT an enclosed system ** - it is supplied with vast amounts of energy by the sun. It is true that evolution represents an increase in order, but this is “paid for” by the enormous increase in entropy represented by the “burning down” of the sun: overall, the entropy of the Sun+Earth system has increased.
SentientMeat
such that infinitessimal differences lead to very different later configurations, usually via a strongly nonlinear process
rjk
so a tiny change in the starting conditions can make the final state unpredictable
That’s Chaos theory, oh. Well I understood that to be a given since I first learned of evolution. The longer the time pass, the greater the variation and with no real predictability.
SentientMeat
paul, I think the word you are looking for is not chaos but entropy: Suns burn out, explosions create disorder, that kind of thing. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an enclosed system entropy (“disorder”) can only increase.
Well, I never thought of suns burning out, explosions, planets colliding, etc as disorder (on a larger scale). It is part of evolution, right??
SentientMeat
It is a creationist fallacy that evolution violates this law: The Earth is NOT an enclosed system - it is supplied with vast amounts of energy by the sun. It is true that evolution represents an increase in order, but this is “paid for” by the enormous increase in entropy represented by the “burning down” of the sun: overall, the entropy of the Sun+Earth system has increased.
Well, is the entire system(universe) enclosed ?? I think Einstein thought so, yet it evolves.
You could argue that the entire universe is an enclosed system, but then, evolution on Earth would not violate the second law. After all, the Earth is about one zillionth of the universe, so a local maintenance of observed order - due, presumably, to the enormous transfer of energy from the Sun to the Earth - would not prevent the universe as a whole from experiencing net entropy, would it?
Paul’s mars- Evolution is a biological theory unconnected with cosomolgy, but entropy on a large scale where gravity predominates can be counter intutive as in genral an increase in entropy represnts an increase in inhomogeneity, which is exactly the opposite than you might expect (given what we know about gas diffusing through a macroscopic sized box), so for example the collapse of a cloud of gas into a star represents an increase in entropy (and if you wish to equate disorder and entropy, disorder).
Chaotic systems are detirminstic and can be evaluted in a completly detirmintistic manner, this is how computers can model chaotic systems and also produce those intricate patterns generated by fractals. Chaotic algorithms are not necessarily complicated.
No, chaos theory =
The existence of several (seemingly) simple factors results in unpredictable complexity
Read “At Home in the Universe” by Stuart Kauffman, in which he uses chaos theory to demonstrate why the evolution of life is not only possible, but quite probable. In a complex system, interesting, “life-like” patterns tend to arise right on the verge of a phase change between complete chaos and stagnant unchanging order. He argues that the chemical makeup of the primordial earth would have been just such a system, and that it would tend to continually self-correct right back to that phase change area. Quite interesting.
It remains an interesting question whether evolution is chaotic. Steven J. Gould argued that if you ran evolution over again, restarted the solar system and saw what happened, there is no reason to believe that mankind or anything remotely like it would evolve. (As one example, if one theory of dinosaur extinction is correct, then without a certain meteor strike 65 million years ago, there might still be dinos striding the earth, while others point out that dinosaurs seemed to be on the decline before that.) Others argue the opposite point of view and believe that man or something like it was inevitable. FWIW, I am with Gould on this one. Although life on earth began pretty much as soon as conditions permitted, it remained prokaryotic slime for almost half the time there has been life here. After eukaryotes evolved, they remained single-cell for an awfully long time. Multi-celled life soon did give rise to vertebrates, but only one small group of fishes (the lungfish) apparently had the capacity to leave the ocean and develop limbs and ultimately hands and brains. There is something entirely fortuitous about the whole thing that inclines me to Gould’s view.
At any rate chaos theory per se has nothing to say about the possibility of evolution. It is only a theory about how certain kinds of non-linear processes work. In fact, the phenomena it claims are so many and varied that I wonder whether there is really anything there to be called a theory.
And from this comes the science fiction scenario in which someone builds a time machine, returns to the distant past, steps on a butterfly, and then returns home to a “present” which is subtly altered (in a sinister way). The Simpsons did a great spoof of this in one of the Halloween specials, but the original story is pretty old (Asimov, maybe?) - I’m sure I read it as a kid, long before chaos theory became popular.
The butterfly story was: A Sound Of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Not Asimov - Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder.
The idea that universe evolves raises a few questions:
1)The universe evolves??
2)The universe is a living organism???
3)What changes to it’s ecological niche does it adapt to, or what are the new niches it moves to?
4)What other universes is it in competition for survival with?
5)How does it pass traits to its offspring?
6)Wait a minute… what offspring??
7)The universe… evolves???