The new science of complexity

Joseph L. McCauley
Physics Department
University of Houston
Houston, Texas 77204

[email protected]
arXiv:physics/0001029 13 Jan 2000

key words:
complexity
simulations
laws of nature
invariance principles
socio-economic sciences

Abstract

Deterministic chaos, and even maximum computational complexity, have

been discovered within Newtonian dynamics. Encouraged by comparisons of

the economy with the weather, a Newtonian system, economists assume that

prices and price changes can also obey abstract mathematical laws of motion.

Meanwhile, sociologists and other postmodernists advertise that physics and

chemistry have outgrown their former limitations, that chaos and complexity

provide new holistic paradigms for science, and that the boundaries between

the hard and the soft sciences, once impenetrable, have disappeared along

with the Berlin Wall. Three hundred years after the deaths of Galileo,

Descartes, and Kepler, and the birth of Newton, reductionism would appear

to be on the decline, with holistic approaches to science on the upswing. We

therefore examine the evidence that dynamical laws of motion may be

discovered from empirical studies of chaotic or complex phenomena, and

also review the foundations of reductionism.

1
Socio-economic fields and "system theory"

I define "system theory" to include mathematical models written in terms of

systems of deterministic and stochastic ordinary and partial differential

equations, iterated maps, and deterministic and stochastic automata. The idea

is to include every possible kind of dynamical modelling.

In attempts to describe socio-economic phenomena from the standpoint of

system theory it is Platonically assumed that the probability distributions

describing prices and price changes, or other social factors, are determined by

an objective mathematical law that governs how the economic system

evolves [1]. This assumption is not only sufficient but is also necessary if the

idea of mathematical law in economics is to make any sense. In physics and

chemistry the ideas of entropy, thermodynamics, and nonequilibrium

statistical mechanics are grounded in universally-valid microscopic

dynamics. Without the underlying dynamics of particles, fluids and solid or

plastic bodies there would be no dynamical origin for macroscopic probability

distributions.

By a mathematical law of nature I mean a law of motion, a mathematical law

of time-evolution. Galileo and Kepler discovered the simplest special cases.

Their local laws were generalized by Newton to become three universally-

valid laws of motion, along with a universal law of gravity. Newton's laws

are "universal" in the following sense: they can be verified, often with very

high decimal precision, regardless of where and when on earth (or on the

moon or in an artificial satellite) careful, controlled experiments, or careful

observations, are performed. It is the main purpose of this paper to stress the

2
implications of the fact that no comparable result has ever been found in the

socio-economic fields.

"Laws" of economics, "laws" of human behavior, and the Darwin-Wallace

"laws" of fitness, competition, selection and adaptation are sometimes

mentioned in the same context as laws of motion of inanimate matter

(physics and chemistry), although since the time of Galileo the word "law" in

the first three cases does not have the same import as in the case of physico-

chemical phenomena. Confusion over what constitutes a law of nature is

ancient: Aristotle invented a purely qualitative, holistic approach to the

description of nature. Not recognizing any distinction between the different

uses of the idea of natural law, he lumped together as "motion" the rolling of

a ball, the education of a boy, and the growth of an acorn [2]. Ibn-Rushd

realized that Aristotle's philosophy is consistent with a purely mechanistic

picture of the universe. The growing influence of the mechanistic

interpretation of nature in western Europe set Tomasso d'Aquino into

motion in the thirteenth century. Aristotle did not use mathematics, but

mechanism and mathematics go hand in hand. Is human nature, in some

still-unknown mathematical sense, also mechanistic?

In the first chapter of his text on elementary economics [3], Samuelson tries to

convince both the reader and himself that the difference between the socio-

economic fields and the laws of physics is blurry, so that economics can be

treated as if it would also be a science subject to mathematical law. Samuelson

claims that physics is not necessarily as lawful as it appears, that the laws of

physics depend subjectively on one's point of view. His argument is based on

a nonscientific example of ambiguity from the visual perception of art (figure

3
1), and is genetically related through academic mutation and evolution to a

viewpoint that has been advanced by the postmodernist and

deconstructionist movement in art, literature, philosophy, psychology, and

sociology. The latter argue that a text has no more meaning than the symbols

on a printed page, that there is no universal truth, and therefore no universal

laws of nature, and that Platonic-Ptolemeic astronomy and Aristotelian

physics are still just as valid as fields of scientific study as are physics and

astronomy since Galileo and Kepler (who revived the spirit of Archimedes).

Samuelson notes that physics relies on controlled experiments, and adds that

in the socio-economic fields it is generally impossible to perform controlled

experiments. This is not an excuse for bad science: controlled experiments are

also impossible in astronomy where mathematical laws of nature have been

verified with high decimal precision. See also Feynman [4] for criticism of the

lack of isolation of cause and effect in the psycho-social fields.

Platonists in mathematics [5] form another category, believing that

mathematical laws exist objectively and govern everything that happens.

Physics is neither Aristotelian (qualitative and "holistic") nor Platonic

(relying upon wishful thinking, because the "expected" mathematical laws

are not grounded in careful, repeatable empiricism).

The divorce of the study of nature from Platonic and Aristotelian notions was

initiated by Galileo and Descartes [6], but that divorce was not complete: with

Galileo's empirical discoveries of two local laws of nature, the law of inertia

and the local law of gravity, physics became a precise mathematico-empirical

science. Biology, excepting the study of heredity since Mendel and excepting

4
biochemistry and biophysics since the advent of quantum mechanics, has

continued through the age of Darwin and beyond as a largely descriptive

science in the tradition of Aristotle, with reliance upon vague,

mathematically-undefined notions like "competition, natural selection and

adaptation".

I will explain why economic and other social phenomena lie beyond the

bounds of understanding from the standpoint of dynamical modelling that

attempts to describe the time-evolution of systems, even if the goal is merely

to extract the crudest features like coarsegrained statistics. I will give reasons

why mathematical laws of economics do not exist in any empirical or

computationally-effective [7] sense. In order to make my argument precise, I

first review some little-known and poorly-understood facts about

deterministic dynamical systems that include Newton's laws of motion for

particles and rigid bodies, and also nondiffusive chemically-reacting systems.

What does "nonintegrable" mean?

We expect that any system of ordinary differential equations generating

critical (orbitally-metastable), chaotic (orbitally-unstable), or complex

dynamics must be both nonlinear and nonintegrable. Most of us think that

we can agree on the meaning of "nonlinear". Before asking "What is

complexity?" we first define what "nonintegrable" means [8,9].

The ambiguity inherent in both serious and superficial attempts to

distinguish "integrability" from "nonintegrability" was expressed poetically by

Poincaré, who stated that a dynamical system is generally neither integrable

5
nor nonintegrable, but is more or less integrable [10]. For most scientists the

explanation of various roots to chaos (via period doubling, e.g.) has tended to

submerge rather than clarify the question how to distinguish those two ideas,

but without eliminating many misconceptions. Modern mathematicians

have managed to give some precise definitions of nonintegrability [11] that

are hard to translate into simpler mathematics. Here, I try to describe what

"nonintegrability" means geometrically and analytically.

For the sake of precision I frame my discussion in the context of flows in

phase space,

dx = V(x)
dt , (1)

where phase space is a flat inner product space so that the n axes labeled by
(x1,...,xn) can be regarded as Cartesian [12], and V(x) is an n-component time-

independent velocity field. Newtonian dynamical systems can always be

rewritten in this form whether or not the variables xi defining the system in

physical three dimensional space are Cartesian (for example, it is allowed

have x1 = θ and x2 = dθ/dt, where θ is an angular variable). Flows that

preserve the Cartesian volume element dΩ = dx1...dxn are defined by ∇⋅V = 0

(conservative flows) while driven dissipative-flows correspond to ∇⋅V ≠ 0,

where ∇ denotes the Cartesian gradient in n dimensions.

For a velocity field whose components satisfy the condition V1 + ... + Vn = 0,

then the global conservation law x1 + ... + xn = C follows. This abstract case

includes chemically-reacting systems with concentration xi for species i.

6
For a flow and for any initial condition xo the solution xi(t) = U(t)xio has no

finite time singularities [13] because singularities of trajectories of flows are

confined to the complex time plane: the time evolution operator U(t) exists

for all real finite times t and defines a one-parameter transformation group

with inverse U-1(t) = U(-t), so that one can in principle integrate backward in
time, xoi = U(-t)xi(t), as well as forward. In other words, even driven-

dissipative flows are perfectly time-reversible.

Many researchers use floating point arithmetic in numerical integrations of

chaotic systems but uncontrollable errors are introduced into numerical

integrations by the use of floating point arithmetic, and those errors violate

time reversibility in the simplest of cases. Even for a nonchaotic driven-

dissipative flow floating-point errors will prevent accurate numerical

solutions either forward or backward in time after only a relatively short time

[12] . The simplest example is given by the one dimensional flow dy/dt = y,
all of whose streamlines have the positive Liapunov exponent λ = 1 forward

in time, and the negative Liapunov exponent λ = - 1 backward in time.

Consequently, the simple linear equation dy/dt = y cannot be integrated

forward in time accurately numerically, for moderately-long times, if floating

point arithmetic is used.

Chaotic unimodal maps zn = f(zn-1) like the logistic map f(x) = Dx(1-x) have a

multi-valued inverse zn-1 = f-1(zn) and therefore are not uniquely time-

reversible. Contrary to superficial appearances based upon an unwarranted

extrapolation of a numerical calculation, time reversal is not violated by the

Lorenz model

7
d x1
= σ (x 2 ± x 1)
dt
d x2
= ρx 1 ± x 2 ± x 1x 3
dt
d x3
= ± β x 3 + x 1x 2
dt (1b)

in the chaotic regime. The well-known numerically-suggested one

dimensional cusp map (figure 2) zn = f(zn-1) that represents maxima of a time

series [14] of x3(t) at discrete times to, t1, ..., tn, ... , where tn-tn-1 denotes the

time lag between successive maxima zn-1 = x3(tn-1) and zn = x3(tn), can not

have a double-valued inverse zn-1 = f-1(zn): backward integration

zn-1 = U(tn-1 -tn)zn is unique for a flow, and the Lorenz model satisfies the

boundedness condition for a flow [14] . Therefore, Lorenz's one dimensional

cusp map zn = f(zn-1) is not continuous and may even be infinitely fragmented

and nondifferentiable in order that the inverse map f-1 doesn't have two

branches. Note that the Lorenz model may describe a chemically-reacting

system if β = 0 and σ = ρ = 1, in which case the flow is driven-dissipative but is

not chaotic (the flow is orbitally-stable, with no positive Liapunov exponent

in forward integration).

Surprise has been expressed that it was found possible to describe a certain

chaotic flow by a formula in the form of an infinite series [8], but

"nonintegrable" does not mean not solvable: any flow, even a critical, chaotic

or complex one, has a unique, well-defined solution if the velocity field V(x)

satisfies a Lipshitz condition (a Lipshitz condition requires the definition of a

metric in phase space), or is at least once continuously differentiable, with

8
respect to the n variables xi. If, in addition, the velocity field is analytic in

those variables then the power series

xi(t) = xio + t(Lxi)o + t2(L2xi)o/2 + ...., (2)

where L = V⋅ ∇, has a nonvanishing radius of convergence, so that the

solution of (1) can in principle be described by the power series (2) combined

with analytic continuation for all finite times [15] . It is well known that this

is not a practical prescription for the calculation of trajectories at long times.

The point is that a large category of deterministic chaotic and complex flows

are precisely determined over any desired number of finite time intervals by

analytic formulae. The Lorenz model (1b) provides an example. Analyticity is

impossible for the case of truly "random" motion (like α-particle decays),

where the specification of an initial condition does not determine a trajectory

at all (as in Feynman's path integral), or for Langevin descriptions of

diffusive motion, where almost all trajectories are also continuous and

almost everywhere nondifferentiable (as in Wiener's functional integral).

According to Jacobi and Lie, a completely integrable dynamical system has n-1
global time-independent first integrals (conservation laws) Gi(x1,...,xn) = Ci

satisfying the linear partial differential equation

dGi = V⋅∇G = V ∂G i = 0
i k
dt ∂xk (3)

along any streamline of the flow. In addition, these conservation laws must

(in principle, but not necessarily via explicit construction) determine n-1
"isolating integrals" of the form xk = gk(xn,C1,...,Cn-1) for k = 1,...,n-1. When all

9
of this holds then the global flow is a time-translation for all finite times t in

the Lie coordinate system

y i = Gi(x 1 ,...,xn ) = Ci, i = 1,...,n-1

yn = F(x1,...,xn) = t + D (4)

defined by the n-1 conservation laws, and the system is called completely

integrable. The solution reduces in principle to n independent integrations,

and the flow is confined to a two-dimensional manifold that may be either

flat or curved and is determined by the intersection of the n-1 global

conservation laws. For the special case of a canonical Hamiltonian flow with f

degrees of freedom, f commuting conservation laws confine the flow to a

constant speed translation on an f dimensional flat manifold. The nth

transformation function F(x1,...,xn) is defined by integrating dt =

dxn/Vn(x1,...,xn) = dx/vn(xn,C1,...,Cn-1) to yield t + D = f(xn,C1,...,Cn-1). One then

uses the n-1 conservation laws to eliminate the constants Ci in favor of the

n-1 variables xi in f to obtain the function F. Whether one can carry out all or

any of this constructively, in practice, is geometrically irrelevant: in the

description (4) of the flow all effects of interactions have been eliminated

globally via a coordinate transformation. The transformation (4)

"parallelizes" (or "rectifies" [13]) the flow: the streamlines of (1) in the y-
coordinate system are parallel to a single axis yn for all times, and the time

evolution operator is a uniform time-translation U(t) = etd/dyn. Eisenhart

asserted formally, without proof, that all systems of differential equations (1)

are described by a single time translation operator [16], but this is possible

globally (meaning for all finite times) only in the completely integrable case.

10
Although time-dependent first integrals are stressed in discussions of

integrable cases of driven-dissipative flows like the Lorenz model [8], there is

generally no essential difference between (3) and the case of n time-dependent

first integrals G'i(x1,...,xn,t) = C'i satisfying

dGi = V⋅∇G + ∂Gi = 0

i
dt ∂t . (3b)

Relying on the implicit function theorem, one conservation law G'n(x1,...,xn,t)

= C'n can be used to determine a function t = F'(x1,...,xn,C'n), whose

substitution into the other n-1 time-dependent conservation laws yields n-1

time-independent ones satisfying (3).

The n initial conditions xio = U(-t)xi(t) of (1) satisfy (3b) and therefore qualify

as time-dependent conservation laws, but initial conditions of (1) are

generally only trivial local time-dependent conservation laws: dynamically

seen, there is no qualitative difference between backward and forward

integration in time. Nontrivial global conservation laws are provided by the

initial conditions yio, for i = 1, 2, ... , n-1, of a completely integrable flow in

the Lie coordinate system (4), where the streamlines are parallel for all finite
times: dyi/dt = 0, i = 1,...,n-1, and dyn/dt = 1.

Algebraic or at least analytic conservation laws [8] have generally been

assumed to be necessary in order to obtain complete integrability. For

example, Euler's description of a torque-free rigid body [12]

11
d L1
= a L 2L 3
dt
d L2
= ± bL 1L 3
dt
dL = c L L
1 2
dt , (5)

with positive constants a , b , and c satisfying a - b + c = 0, defines a phase flow

in three dimensions that is confined to a two dimensional sphere that follows

from angular momentum conservation L12 + L22 + L32 = L2. Here, we have

completely integrable motion that technically violates the naive expectation

that each term in (4) should be given by a single function: for each period τ of

the motion, the transformation function F has four distinct branches due to
the turning points of the three Cartesian components Li of angular momenta

on the sphere. In general, any "isolating integral" gk describing bounded

motion must be multivalued at a turning point. Note also that the Lorenz

model defines a certain linearly damped, driven symmetric top: to see this, set

a = 0 and b = c = 1 in (5), and ignore all linear terms in (1b).

The few mathematicians who have discussed conservation laws in the

literature usually have assumed that first integrals must be analytic or at least

continuous [13] (however, see also ref. [11] where nonanalytic functions as

first integrals are also mentioned). This is an arbitrary restriction that is not

always necessary in order to generate the transformation (4) over all finite

times: a two-dimensional flow in phase space, including a driven-dissipative

flow, is generally integrable via a conservation law but that conservation law
is typically singular. The conservation law is simply the function G(x1,x2) = C

that describes the two-dimensional phase portrait, and is singular at sources

and sinks like attractors and repellers (equilibria and limit cycles provide

12
examples of attractors and repellers in driven-dissipative planar flows) [12] .

For the damped simple harmonic oscillator, for example, the conservation

law has been constructed analytically [17] and is logarithmically singular at

the sink. The planar flow where dr/dt = r and dθ/dt = 0 in cylindrical

coordinates (r,θ) describes radial flow out of a source at r = 0. The

conservation law is simply θ, which is constant along every streamline and is

undefined at r = 0. This integrable flow is parallelizeable for all finite times t

simply by excluding one point, the source at r = 0 (infinite time would be

required to leave or reach an equilibrium point, but the infinite time limit is

completely unphysical). "Nonintegrable" flows do not occur in the phase

plane. What can we say about "nonintegrability" about in three or more

dimensions?

In differential equations [13] and differential geometry [18] there is also an idea

of local integrability: one can parallelize an arbitrary vector field V about any
"noncritical point", meaning about any point xo where the field V(x) does not

vanish. The size ε(xo) of the region where this parallelization holds is finite

and depends nonuniversally on the n gradients of the vector field. This

means that we can "rectify" even chaotic and complex flows over a finite
time, starting from any nonequilibrium point xo. By analytic continuation

[11,19] , this local parallelization of the flow yields n-1 nontrival "local"
conservation laws yi = Gi(x) = Ci that hold out to the first singularity of any

one of the n-1 functions Gi, in agreement with the demands of the theory of

first order linear partial differential equations (the linear partial differential

equation (3) always has n-1 functionally independent solutions, but the

solutions may be singular [17]).

13
Contemplate the trajectory of a "nonintegrable" flow that passes through any
nonequilibrium point xo, and let t = 0 when x = xo. Let t(xo) then denote the

time required for the trajectory to reach the first singularity of one of the
conservation laws Gk. Such a singularity must exist, otherwise the flow

would be confined for all finite times ("globally") to a single, smooth two-

dimensional manifold. The global existence of a two-dimensional manifold

can be prevented, for example, by singularities that make the n-1

conservation laws Gi multivalued in an extension of phase space to complex

variables [11]. Generally, as with solutions of (1) defined locally by the series
expansion (2), the n-1 local conservation laws Gi will be defined locally by

infinite series with radii of convergence determined by singularities that lie

in the complex extension of phase space. The formulae (4) then hold for a
finite time 0≤t<t(xo) that is determined by the distance from xo to the nearest

complex singularity. Let x1(xo) denote the point in phase space where that

singularity causes the series defining Gi to diverge. Following Arnol'd's [13]

statement of the "basic theorem of ordinary differential equations", we

observe that the streamline of a flow (1) passing through xo can not be affected

by the singularity at x1(xo) in the following superficial sense (consistent with

the fact that the singularities of the functions Gi are either branch cuts or

phase singularities): we can again parallelize the flow about the singular point
x1(xo) and can again describe the streamline for another finite time

t(xo)≤t<t(x1) by another set of parallelized flow equations of the form (4),

where t(x1) is the time required to reach the next singularity x2(xo) of any one

of the n-1 conservation laws Gi, starting from the second initial condition

x1(xo). Reparallelizing the flow about any one of these singularities is

somewhat like resetting the calendar when crossing the international

14
dateline, except that a nonintegrable flow is generally not confined globally to

a two dimensional analytic manifold.

We have reasoned that a "nonintegrable" flow is piecewise integrable:

different sets of formulae of the form (4) hold in principle for consecutive
finite time intervals 0≤t(xo)<t(x1), t(x1)≤t<t(x2), ... t(xn-1)≤t<t(xn), .... , giving

geometric meaning to Poincaré's dictum [10] that a dynamical system is

generally neither integrable nor nonintegrable but is more or less integrable.

Nonintegrable flows are describable over arbitrarily-many consecutive time

intervals by the simple formulae of the form (4) except at countably many
singular points x1(xo), x2(xo), ... , where the n-1 initial conditions yio and the

integration constant D must be reset. The relevance for Takens's embedding

theorem is discussed in [9].

Deterministic chaos as simple dynamics

We have often read over the last twenty years that deterministic chaos can

explain complex phenomena, but without having had a definition of

"complex". This was the point of view in the era when computers were used

to try to study chaoic motions via numerical integrations without error

control, based upon floating point forward integrations of chaotic dynamical

equations (or by forward iterations of chaotic maps). We have since learned

that uncontrolled numerical integrations can be avoided, and

correspondingly that chaotic dynamics can be understood from a certain

topologic point of view as relatively simple dynamics. This "new" approach

(roughly ten years old) is the consequence of analytic studies of chaotic

15
systems using controlled approximations via a purely digital method called

"symbolic dynamics".

Symbol sequences are equivalent to digit strings in some base of arithmetic.

Since we are going to talk about digit strings it is both wise and useful to begin

with the idea of a computable number [20,21]. The reason for this is simple:

"algorithmically random" numbers and sequences "exist" in the

mathematical continuum but require infinite time and infinite precision for

their definition, and therefore have no application to either experiment or

computation.

By a computable number, we mean either a rational number or an algorithm

that generates a digit expansion for an irrational number in some base of

arithmetic, like the usual grade school algorithm for the square-root

operation in base ten (the same algorithm also works in any other integer

base). If we use computable numbers as control parameters and initial

conditions, then the chaotic dynamical systems typically studied in physics

and chemistry are computable, e.g. via (2) combined with analytic

continuation. The Lorenz model (1b) provides one example. Systems of

chemical kinetic equations provide other examples.

Seen from the perspective of computability, the local solution (2) of a

dynamical system (1) that is digitized completely in some base of arithmetic

defines an "artificial automaton", an abstract model of a computer. The

digitized initial condition constitutes the program for the automaton. In a

chaotic dynamical system the part of the program that directs the trajectory

16
into the distant future is encoded as the end-string εN+1... of digits in an initial

condition xo = . ε1.ε2...εN... . For example,the binary tent map xn = f(xn-1),

2x, x< 1/2

f(x) =
2(1 - x), x > 1/2 , (6)

can be rewritten and studied naturally in binary arithmetic by writing

xn = .ε1(n)ε2(n)...εn(n)..., with εi(n) = 0 or 1. The map (2) is then represented by

the simple automaton [21]

εi+1(n-1), ε1(n-1) = 0
εi(n) =
1 - εi+1(n-1), ε1(n-1) = 1 . (6b)

For every possible binary-encoded "computer program" xo = .ε1(0)ε2(0)...εN(0)...

this automaton performs only a trivial computation: either it reads a bit in

the program, or else flips the bit and reads it, then moves one bit to the right

and repeats the operation. The logistic map at the period doubling critical

point [22], in contrast, is capable of performing simple arithmetic.

Unlike the binary tent map in binary arithmetic, most dynamical systems do

not admit a "natural" base of arithmetic. The logistic map f(x) = Dx(1-x) with

D arbitrary and the Lorenz model are examples. The series solutions of these

dynamical systems can still be rewritten as automata in any integer base of

arithmetic, albeit in relatively cumbersome fashion. However, there is a

systematic generalization of solution of the binary Bernoulli shift map

xn = 2xn-1 mod 1 via binary arithmetic that sometimes works: symbolic

dynamics. The symbolic dynamics of a chaotic dynamical system can be

defined, and solved digitally at least in principle, if the map has a generating

17
partition [23]. For the binary tent map (6) the generating partition, in

generation n, consists of the 2n intervals l(n) = 2-n that are obtained by

backward iteration of the entire unit interval by the map (a chaotic one

dimensional map contracts intervals in backward iteration). Each interval in

the generating partition can be labeled by an n-bit binary (L,R) address (L and

R are defined in figure 3) called a symbol sequence, as is shown in figure 4.

The symbol sequence tells us the itinerary of the map, for n forward
iterations, for any initial condition that is covered by the interval l(n)(ε1ε2...εn)

labeled by the n-bit address ε1ε2...εn, where εi = L or R [21].

Excepting pathological cases where the contraction rate in backward iteration

is too slow, an infinite length symbol sequence corresponds uniquely to an

infinitely-precise initial condition. Given a symbol sequence, coarsegrained

statistics for any number Nn of bins in the generating partition (Nn = 2n for

the binary tent map) can be obtained merely by reading the sequence while

sliding an N-bit window one bit at a time to the right, as is indicated in figure

5. Clearly, orbital statistics depend on initial conditions, and it is very easy to

construct algorithms for initial conditions whose orbital statistics do not

mimic the uniform invariant density of the binary tent map (e. g.,
xo = .101001000100001... qualifies and follows from an obvious algorithm). I

have explained elsewhere why "random" initial conditions may be a bad

assumption for a dynamical system far from thermal equilibrium [9,21].

Because the binary tent map generates all possible infinite-length binary

sequences (almost all of which are not computable via any possible algorithm

[20]), we can use that map to generate any histogram that can be constructed in

finitely-many steps, merely by a correct choice of initial conditions [21]. Many

18
different initial conditions will allow the dynamical system to generate the

same coarsegrained statistics because the precise ordering of L's and R's in a

symbol sequence doesn't matter in determining the histograms.

Liapunov exponents depend strongly on initial conditions, a fact that is not

brought out by concentration on excessively simple models like the

symmetric tent map, or numerical attempts to extract "the largest Liapunov

exponent" of a chaotic dynamical system like the Lorenz model. Chaotic

dynamical systems like the Lorenz model or the logistic map generally

generate an entire spectrum of Liapunov exponents (and therefore also a

spectrum of largest Liapunov exponents). The easiest way to understand this

is to solve for the generating partition and Liapunov exponents of the

asymmetric tent map [21], where only simple algebra is needed.

We define a class of initial conditions to consist of all initial conditions that

yield the same Liapunov exponent λ. Correspondingly, we can say that a class

of symbol sequences defines a single Liapunov exponent. The Boltzmann

entropy per iteration s(λ) of all symbol sequences with the same Liapunov

exponent λ defines the fractal dimension D(λ) = s(λ)/λ of that class of initial

conditions [12,21], so that a chaotic dynamical system generally generates

spectra of both Liapunov exponents and fractal dimensions.

Both critical [22] and chaotic [23] dynamical systems may generate a natural

partitioning of phase space, the generating partition, but not every

nonintegrable dynamical system defines a generating partition. If a

deterministic dynamical system has a generating partition then the symbolic

dynamics can in principle be solved and the long-time behavior can be

19
understood qualitatively, without the need to compute specific trajectories

algorithmically from the algorithmic construction of a specific computable

initial condition. For example, one need only determine the possible symbol

sequences and then read them with a sliding n-bit window in order to

generate the statistics in the form of a hierarchy of histograms (figure 5). In

other words, a high degree of "computational compressibility" holds even if

the dynamical system is critical or chaotic.

Every chaotic dynamical system generates infinitely-many different classes of

statistical distributions for infinitely-many different classes of initial

conditions, and at most one of those distributions is differentiable (unlike the

case of equilibrium statistical mechanics, there is no empirical evidence to

suggest that nature far from equilibrium evolves from unknown initial

conditions to generate differentiable distributions [9]). The generating

partition, if it exists, uniquely forms the support of every possible statistical

distribution and also characterizes the particular dynamical system (the

intervals l(n) = 2-n characterize the binary tent map and the binary Bernoulli

shift). For a system with a generating partition, topologic universality classes

can be defined that permit one to study the simplest system in the

universality class [24]. The infinity of statistical distributions is topologically

invariant and therefore can not be used to discern or characterize a particular

dynamical system within a universality class [21].

For maps of the unit interval, both the symmetric and asymmetric logistic

maps peaking at or above unity belong to the trivial universality class of the

binary tent map [21] (where all possible binary sequences are allowed). The

topologic universality class is described by figure 4, and is defined by the

20
complete binary tree. Dynamical systems that generate complete ternary trees

or incomplete binary trees, e.g., define other universality classes. The two

dimensional Henon map belongs to the universality class of chaotic logistic

maps of the unit interval peaking beneath unity. The simplest model in this

topologic universality class is the symmetric tent map with slope magnitude

between 1 and 2, and the class is defined by a certain incomplete binary tree

[24].

In these systems the long-time behavior can be understood qualitatively and

statistically in advance, so that the future holds no surprises: the generating

partition and symbol sequences can be used to describe the motion at long

times, to within any desired degree of precision l(n), and multifractal scaling

laws (via the D(λ) spectrum) show how finer-grained pictures of trajectories

are related to coarser-grained ones. In other words, universality and scaling

imply relatively simple dynamics in spite of the fact that the word "complex"

has often been used to describe deterministic chaos.

Complex dynamics

Scale invariance based upon criticality has been suggested as an approach to

"complex space-time phenomena" based upon the largely unfulfilled

expectation of finding universal scaling laws, generated dynamically by many

interacting degrees of freedom and yielding critical states independent of

parameter-tuning [25,26], that are ubiquitous in nature. This is equivalent to

expecting that nature is mathematically relatively simple.

21
From the standpoint of computable functions and computable numbers we

can generally think of a deterministic dynamical system as a computer with

the initial condition as the program [21]. Thinking of dynamics from this

point of view, it has been discovered that there is a far greater and far more

interesting degree of complicated behavior in nonlinear dynamics than either

criticality or deterministic chaos: systems of billiard balls combined with

mirrors [27,27b] , and even two-dimensional maps [28], can exhibit

universal computational capacity via formal equivalence to a Turing

machine. A system of nine first order quasi-linear partial differential

equations has been offered as a computationally-universal system [29] . A

quasi-linear first order partial differential equation in n variables can be

replaced by a linear one in n+1 variables. Maximum computational

complexity is apparently possible in systems of linear first order partial

differential equations. Such systems are nondiffusive but can describe

damped-driven dynamics and wave propagation.

For a dynamical system with universal computational capability a

classification into topologic universality classes is impossible [28] . Given an

algorithm for the computation of an initial condition to as many digits as

computer time allows, nothing can be said in advance about the future either

statistically or otherwise except to compute the dynamics with controlled

precision for that initial condition, iteration by iteration, to see what falls out:

there is no computational compressibility that allows us to summarize the

system's long-time behavior, either statistically or otherwise. In contrast with

the case where topologic universality classes exist there is no tree-like

organization of a hierarchy of periodic orbits, stable, marginally stable, or

unstable, that allows us to understand the fine-grained behavior of an orbit

22
from the coarse-grained behavior via scaling laws, or to look into the very

distant future for arbitrary (so-called "random") initial conditions via

symbolic dynamics. There can be no scaling laws that hold independently of a

very careful choice of classes of initial conditions. We do not know whethe

either fluid turbulence or Newton's three-body problem fall into this

category.

Some degrees of complexity are defined precisely in computer science [30]

but these definitions, based soley on computability theory, have not satisfied

physicists [31,31b,32] . According to von Neumann [33] a system is complex

when it is easier to build than to describe mathematically. Under this

qualitative definition the Henon map is not complex but a living cell is. In

earlier attempts to model biologic evolution [34,35] information was

incorrectly identified as complexity. The stated idea was to find an algorithm

that generates information, but this is too easy: the square root algorithm and

the logistic map f(x) = 4x(1-x) generate information at the rate of one bit per

iteration from rational binary initial conditions.

There is no correct model of a dynamic theory of the evolution of biologic

complexity, neither over short time intervals (cell to embryo to adult) nor

over very long time intervals (inorganic matter to organic matter to

metabolizing cells and beyond). There is no physico-chemical model of the

time-development of different degrees of complexity in nonlinear dynamics.

No one knows if universal computational capability is necessary for biologic

evolution, although DNA molecules in solution apparently are able to

compute [36], but not error-free like a Turing machine or other deterministic

dynamical system.

23
Moore has speculated that computational universality should be possible in a

certain kind of conservative three degree of freedom Newtonian potential

flow [28] , but so far no one has constructed an analytic example of the

required potential energy. We do not yet know the minimum number of

degrees of freedom necessary for universal computational capability in a

driven-dissipative flow (a digital computer is a very high degree of freedom

damped-driven dynamical system via electric circuit theory). Diffusive

motion is time-irreversible (U-1(t) doesn't exist for diffusive motion), but

arguments have been made that some diffusive dynamical systems may have

an asymptotic limit that is reached asymptotically-fast, where the motion is

non-diffusive and is even time reversible on a finite dimensional attractor

[37,38,39], and is therefore generated on the attractor by a finite dimensional

deterministic dynamical system (1). However, if a diffusive dynamical system

(the Navier-Stokes equations, e.g.) can be shown to be computationally-

universal then it will be impossible to discover a single attractor that would

permit the derivation of scaling laws for eddy cascades in open flows, or in

other flows, independently of specific classes of boundary and initial

conditions.

With a computationally-universal (and therefore computable) dynamical

system (1), given a specific computable initial condition xo, both that initial

condition and the dynamics can in principle be encoded as the digit string for
another computable initial condition yo. If the computable trajectory

y(t) = U(t)yo could be digitally decoded, then we could learn the trajectory

x(t) = U(t)xo for the first initial condition (self-replication without copying

errors). This maximum degree of computational complexity may be possible

24
in low dimensional nonintegrable conservative Newtonian dynamics. Some

features of nonintegrable quantum systems with a chaotic classical limit (the

helium atom, e.g.) have been studied using uncontrolled approximations

based on the low order unstable periodic orbits of a chaotic dynamical system

[40], but we have no hint what might be the behavior of a low dimensional
quantum mechanical system with a computationally-complex Newtonian

limit. Interacting DNA molecules obey the laws of quantum mechanics but

the biologically-interesting case can not be reduced to a few degrees of

freedom.

Can new laws of nature emerge from studies of complicated motions? [42]

The empirical discovery of mathematical laws of nature arose from the study

of the simplest possible dynamical systems: classical mechanics via Galilean

trajectories of apples and Keplerian orbits of two bodies (the sun and one

planet) interacting via gravity, and quantum mechanics via the hydrogen

atom. Is there any reason to expect that simplicity can be short-circuited in

favor of complexity in the attempt to discover new mathematical laws of

nature? Some researchers expect this to be possible, but without saying how

[41]. Consider first an example from fluid dynamics where an attempt has

been made to extract a simple law of motion from a complicated time series.

Fluid turbulence provides examples of complicated motions in both space

and time in a Newtonian dynamical system of very high dimension. We

know how to formulate fluid mechanical time evolution according to

Newton's laws of motion, the Navier-Stokes equations, but infinitely many

interacting degrees of freedom represented by second order coupled nonlinear

25
partial differential equations are the stumbling block in our attempt to

understand fluid turbulence mathematically. We do not understand coupled

nonlinear partial differential equations of either the first or second order well

enough to be able to derive any of the important features of fluid turbulence

in either the finite or infinite Reynold's number limit from the Navier-

Stokes equations in a systematic way that starts with the laws of energy and

momentum transport and makes controlled, systematic approximations.

Can eddy-cascades in turbulent open flows [43] be understood by trying to

build simpler mathematical models than the Navier-Stokes equations? So

far, this goal remains nothing but an unfulfilled hope. Setting our sights

much lower, is it possible to derive a mathematical law in the form of an

iterated map that describes only the transition to turbulence, near criticality?

We have noted above that the binary tent map can generate all possible

histograms that can be constructed simply by varying classes of initial

conditions. Statistics that are generated by an unknown dynamical system are

therefore inadequate to infer the dynamical law that generates the observed

statistical behavior [21] . That is why, in any effort to derive a simplified

dynamical system that describes either turbulence or the transition to

turbulence, one cannot rely upon statistics alone. Instead, it is necessary to

extract the generating partition of the dynamical system from the empirical

data, if there is a generating partition.

Consider a low dimensional dynamical system that is described by an

unknown iterated map defined finitely by a generating partition. With

infinite precision and infinite time, it would be possible in principle to pin

26
down the map's universality class and also the map, from a chaotic time

series by the empirical construction of the generating partition. With finite

precision and finite time one must always resort to some guesswork after a

few steps in the hierarchy of unstable periodic orbits, which are arranged

naturally onto a tree of some order and degree of incompleteness [24]. In

practice one can discover at most only a small section of the tree and its

degree of pruning, so if one is to narrow down the practical choices to a few

topologic universality classes of maps the observational data must be

extremely precise. Given the most accurate existing data on a fluid dynamical

system near a critical point, the unique extraction of the universality class of

an iterated map from a chaotic time series has yet to be accomplished without

physically-significant ambiguity [44], demonstrating how difficult is the

empirical problem that one faces in any attempt to extract an unknown law of

motion from the analysis of complicated empirical data.

The method of topologic universality classes [21,23,24] is the only known way

to study the long time behavior of a chaotic dynamical system systematically,

meaning without the introduction of uncontrolled and uncontrollable errors.

For truly complex dynamical systems, therefore, our analysis suggests that the

extraction of laws of motion from empirical data is a hopeless task. This

conclusion does not provide encouragement for experimental

mathematicians who want to discover socio-economic or biologic laws of

chaotic dynamics from raw statistics or the analysis of time series [45]. The

alternative, to imagine that one could "guess" laws of nature without

adequate empirical evidence or corresponding symmetry principles, would be

to ignore the lessons of Archimedes and Galileo and revert to Platonism.

27
Einstein apparently became Platonic later in life, but Platonism was not

Einstein's guiding light (or light-shade) during his generalization of

Newton's theory of gravity, because that generalization is based upon a local

invariance principle: no experiment can be performed to detect any difference

between a linearly-accelerated frame of reference and the effect of a local

gravitational field. This local symmetry principle was not accounted for by

Newtonian theory, and motivated Einstein to discover a new set of

gravitational field equations [46].

Is socio-economic behavior (mathematically-)lawful?

Is it reasonable, even in principle, to expect that mathematical laws of socio-

economic or other mathematical laws of human behavior exist in any

humanly-discernable form? Is it possible abstractly to reduce some aspects of

human behavior to a set of universal formulae, or even to a finite set of more

or less invariant rules? Many economists and system theorists [32,47,48], and

even some sociologists [49,50], assume that this is possible.

By disregarding Galileo's historic and fruitful severing of the abstract study of

inanimate motion from imprecise Aristotelian ideas of "motion" like youths

alearning, acorns asprouting [2], and markets emerging, many mathematical

economists have attempted to describe the irregularities of individual and

collective human nature as if the price movements of a commodity, which

are determined by human decisions and man-made political and economic

rules, would define mathematical variables and abstract universal equations

of motion analogous to ballistics and astronomy (deterministic models), or

analogous to a drunken professor (stochastic models).

28
Mathematical economists often speak of the economy [48], which is

determined by human behavior and man-made rules (and also in part by the

weather, geology, and other limiting physical factors), as if the economy could

be studied mathematically as an abstract dynamical system like the weather.

In the latter case the equations of motion are known but cannot be solved

approximately over large space-time regions by using floating point

arithmetic on a computer without the introduction of uncontrollable errors.

However, for specified boundary and initial conditions the weather is

determined by the mathematical equivalent of many brainless interacting

bodies that can not use intelligience to choose whether or not to obey the

deterministic differential equations whose rigid mathematical rule they are

condemned forever to follow. Chaos and complexity do not install either

randomness, freedom of choice, or arbitrariness in the solutions of

deterministic dynamical equations [21]. The absence of arbitrariness, or

freedom of choice, is part of the key to understanding why mathematics

works in physics but not in the socio-economic fields. Comparing the weather

with socio-economic behavior is not a scientifically-sound theoretical

analogy.

Contrary to certain expectations [51] and to recent extraordinary claims [52] ,

there is no evidence to suggest that abstract dynamical systems theory can be

used either to explain or understand socio-economic behavior. Billiard balls

and gravitating bodies have no choice but to follow mathematical trajectories

that are laid out deterministically, beyond the possibility of human

convention, invention, or intervention, by Newton's laws of motion. The

law of probability of a Brownian particle also evolves deterministically

29
according to the diffusion equation beyond the possibility of human

convention, invention, or intervention. In stark contrast, a brain that directs

the movements of a body continually makes willful and arbitrary decisions at

arbitrary times that cause it to deviate from and eventually contradict any

mathematical trajectory (deterministic models) or evolving set of

probabilities (stochastic models) assigned to it in advance. Given a

hypothetical set of probabilities for a decision at one instant, there is no

algorithm that tells us how to compute the probabilities correctly for later

times, excepting at best the trivial case of curve-fitting at very short times, and

then only if nothing changes significantly. Socio-economic statistics can not

be known in advance of their occurrence because, to begin with, there are no

known socio-economic laws of motion that are correct.

Economists stress that they study open systems, whereas physics concentrates

on closed systems. This claim misses the point completely. We can describe

and understand tornadoes and hurricanes mathematically because the

equations of thermo-hydrodynamics apply, in spite of the fact that the earth's

atmosphere is an open dynamical system. We can not understand the

collapse of the Soviet Union or the financial crisis in Mexico on the basis of

any known set of dynamics equations in spite of the fact that the world

economy forms a closed financial system.

Mathematical-lawlessness reigns supreme in the socio-economic fields,

where nothing of any social or economic significance is left even

approximately invariant by socio-economic evolution, including the "value"

of the Mark. This is the reason that artificial law ("law") must be used by

governments and central banks in the attempt to regulate human behavior,

30
both individually and collectively. Socio-economically, everything that is

significant changes completely unregulated in the absence of police-enforced

artificial law (the Roman method) or strong community traditions (the tribal

method).

In the socio-economic fields there are no fundamental constants because

nothing is left invariant by the time evolution. That nothing is left invariant

is the same as saying that the system is not describable by mathematics:

dynamical systems, even discrete ones [52b], have local conservation laws.

Deterministic dynamical systems obey n-1 local conservation laws that

prevent any external constraint from being imposed on the system. You can

not "legislate" a change in the dynamics of a system that obeys a deterministic

law of motion.

The division of observable phenomena into machine-like and not-machine-

like behavior was made by Descartes [53]. In the Cartesian picture animals are

supposed to behave more like machines, like robots that respond

mechanically to stimuli. People, in contrast with robots, can reason and make

decisions freely, or at least arbitrarily. Even the most illiterate or most stupid

people can speak, can invent sentences creatively, and can behave

unpredictably in other ways as well. The most intelligent dog, cat, or cow

cannot invent intellectual complexity that is equivalent to a human language

or a capitalist economy.

We should ask: why should any part of nature behave mathematically,

simulating an automaton? Why does the mathematics of dynamical systems

theory accurately describe the motions studied in physics, but not the

31
"motions" (in Aristotle's sense) studied in economics, political science,

psychology, and sociology? This question leads to Wigner's discussion of the

"unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in describing the inanimate

aspects of nature that physics traditionally studies, and that fields

disconnected from physics have tried unsuccessfully to imitate merely by

postulating laws of motion that do not pass the test of reproducibility of

measurements.

It is necessary to realize that, in spite of Newton's scholastic style of

presentation of his laws, which many mechanics text books unfortunately

mimic, physics is neither postulatory nor axiomatic. Physics since Galileo is

grounded in a deep interplay of empiricism and mathematical abstraction,

and the reason that this mathematical interplay is at all possible is due to

certain invariance principles (physics would be impossible in the absence of

certain fundamental constants of nature; those constants reflect certain

invariance principles).

Reductionism, invariance principles, and laws of nature

Reductionism is the arbitrary division of nature into laws of motion and

initial conditions, plus "the environment". We must always be able to neglect

"the environment" to zeroth order, because if nothing can be isolated then a

law of motion can never be discovered. For example air resistance had to be

negligible in order that Galileo could discover the law of inertia and the local

law of gravity.

32
The empirical discovery of mathematical laws of motion that correctly

describe nature is impossible in the absence of empirically-significant

invariance principles, but there are no laws of nature that can tell us the

initial conditions. Following Wigner, laws of motion themselves obey laws

called invariance principles, while initial conditions are completely lawless

[54]. Why must mathematical laws of motion that describe nature obey

invariance principles?

"It is not necessary to look deeper into the situation to realize that laws of

nature could not exist without principles of invariance. This is explained in

many texts of elementary physics even though only few of the readers of

these texts have the maturity necessary to appreciate these explanations. If the

correlations between events changed from day to day, and would be different

for different points of space, it would be impossible to discover them. Thus

the invariances of the laws of nature with respect to displacements in space

and time are almost necessary prerequisites that it be possible to discover, or

even catalogue, the correlations between events which are the laws of nature.

E. P. Wigner in Symmetries and Reflections [54]

Nearly every elementary physics text shows that the experiments that Wigner

had in mind are the parabolic trajectories of apples and blocks sliding down

inclined planes, the two physical systems originally studied by Galileo in his

empirical discovery of the local versions of Newton's first two laws of

motion. Those discoveries would have been impossible in the absence of four

fundamental invariance principles.

33
Without translational and rotational invariance in space and translational

invariance in time (at least locally, on earth and within our solar system),

simple mathematical laws of motion like the Keplerian planetary orbits and

the Galilean trajectories of apples could not have been discovered in the first

place. The experiments that are needed to discover the law of inertia are

precisely reproducible because absolute position and absolute time are

irrelevant as initial conditions, which is the same as saying that space is

homogeneous and isotropic (space is locally Euclidean) and that the flow of

time is uniform. The translational invariance of the law of inertia dp/dt=0

means that the law of inertia can be verified regardless of where, in a tangent

plane on earth, you perform the required experiment. The law of Galilean

invariance is inherent in the law of inertia.

Socio-economic phenomena are not invariant in any empirically-discernable

sense. Socio-economic time-development and the corresponding statistics

depend upon absolute position and absolute time, which is the same (for all

practical purposes) as admitting that socio-economic "motions" are not

reducible to a well-defined dynamical system.

Dynamical laws of motion are postulated in economics, but the laws of

physics are not mere postulates: mathematical laws of time-development

come second, invariance principles come first. The law of inertia had to be

discovered first (Galileo/Descartes) before Newton could write down his

second order differential equation that generalizes Galileo's two local

empirical laws, the law of inertia and the local law of gravity. Described from

the standpoint of invariance and symmetry, the law of inertia is the

foundation of all of physics: from it and Galileo's local law of gravity follow

34
two of Newton's three laws of motion and his law of gravity as a

generalization, when Kepler's first law and the action-reaction principle are

used [12]. It is superficial and misleading to imagine that the law of inertia can

be "derived" from Newton's second law merely by setting the net force equal

to zero.

If absolute time and absolute position were relevant initial conditions then

neither the law of inertia nor the local law of gravity would hold: identically

prepared experiments would yield entirely different outcomes in different

places and at different times. In this case there could have been no regularities

discovered by Galileo, and no generalizations to universal laws of classical

mechanics could have been proposed by Newton. Physics would, in that case,

have remained Aristotelian and consequently would have evolved like

economics, sociology, psychology, and political science: the study of a lot of

special cases with no universal time-evolution laws that permit the

prediction, or at least understanding, of phenomena over more than the

short time intervals where curve-fitting sometimes "works", and with no

qualitative understanding whatsoever of the phenomena underlying the

observed "motions" and their corresponding statistics.

System theorists commonly assume that the economy operates like a

dynamical system, the equivalent of an automaton that is too simple to

simulate any kind of creative behavior, including the violation of politically-

enforced laws as occurred during the collapse of the government of the

former Soviet Union and the peasant rebellion in Chiapas. This is a strange

assumption. Without human brains and human agreements based upon

language, "laws" of economic behavior certainly could not exist. Dogs, cows

35
and even peasants generally don't invent money-economies. In contrast, the

available geological and astronomical evidence indicates that Newton's laws

of motion held locally in our corner of the universe long before human

languages emerged on earth.

Wigner considers that we can not rule out that "holistic" laws of nature

(beyond general relativity, for example) might exist, but if so then we have no

way to discover them. Reductionism can not explain everything

mathematically, but reductionism is required in order to explain the

phenomena that can be understood mathematically from the human

perspective. Maybe an "oracle" would be required in order to discern the

workings of a holistic law of motion.

Summarizing, universal laws that are determined by regularities of nature

differ markedly from human-created systems of merely conventional

behavior. The latter consist of learned, agreed-on, and communally- or

politically-enforced behavior, which can always be violated by willful or at

least clever people. People and groups who violate artificial law are

sometimes called either "progressive" or "outlaw", depending on which

social group does the labeling. In Wigner's language, all socio-economic

initial conditions matter because of the lack of invariance, so that it is

impossible to discover any underlying correlations that could be identified as

mathematical laws of socio-economic "progress" (note that the idea of

progress is also a "motion" only in the Aristotelian rather than in the

Galilean sense).

36
Darwinism and neo-Darwinism [551]

"From a physicist's viewpoint, though, biology, history, and economics can be

viewed as dynamical systems."

P. Bak and M. Paczuski in Complexity, Contingency, and Criticality [52]

"Reductionism" (a better word is "science") is criticized by "holists" for not

taking us far enough in our understanding of the world (see the introduction

to ref. [32] and also [56]; see also any attempt by the so-called postmodernists to

discuss science [57]). Some holists hope to be able to mathematize Darwinism

in order to go beyond physics and chemistry (see discussions of "complex

adaptable systems" [32]), but so far they have not been able use their invented

dynamics models to predict or explain anything that occurs in nature. Physics

and astronomy, since the divorce from Platonic mathematics and

Aristotlelian "holism" in the seventeenth century, have a completely

different history (or "evolution") than "political economy" and most of

biology. "Emergence, selection, and adaptation" are buzz words used by

Darwin-oriented holists (see ref. [58] for an alternative form of "holism"),

while postmodernists like to toss around the notion of "a new paradigm for

science". According to the postmodernists, "chaos" (which is merely a part of

classical mechanics or chemical kinetics) is an example of "a new paradigm".

"Paradigms" are very important for philosophers who have not understood

science at the level of Galilean kinematics, and who can not distinguish

science from pseudo-seience. Paradigms and "metaphors" are also important

1 Kelly's book "Out of control" is a bible of "paradigms" of postmodernist

"holistic" thought.

37
for people who know that a particular model doesn't represent what the

researcher purports to study, but wants to claim that it does anyway.

The Aristotelian dream of a holistic approach to physics, biology, economics,

history, and other phenomena was revived by Bertanffly in 1968 [59] under

the heading of system theory. System theory proposes to use mathematics to

describe the time evolution of "the whole", like a living organism or a

money-economy, but generally in the absence of adequate information about

the local correlations of the connected links that determine the behavior of

the whole.

I call attempts to quantify the Aristotelian style of thought "reductionist

holism", or "holistic reductionism" because any mathematization

whatsoever is an attempt at reductionism [42]. Quantification necessarily

ignores all nonquantifiable qualities, and there are plenty of qualitative and

quantitative considerations to ignore if we want to restrict our considerations

to a definite mathematical model. Some physicists tend to believe that

physics, which is successful reductionism (often with several-to-high decimal

accuracy in agreement between theory and reproducible observations),

provides the basis for understanding everything in nature, but only in

principle [60].

There is no effective way to "reduce" the study of DNA to the study of quarks

but this is not a failure of reductionism: both quarks and DNA are accounted

for by quantum mechanics at vastly different length scales. In order to adhere

to the illusion that reductionism might also be able account for biological and

societal phenomena beyond DNA in principle, physicists must leave out of

38
consideration everything that hasn't been accounted for by physics, which

includes many practical problems that ordinary people face in everyday life.

When sociologists [49,50] (who, unlike physicists, claim to interest themselves

in the doings of ordinary people) try to follow suit but merely postulate or

talk about dynamics "paradigms" in the absence of empirically-established

invariance principles, then they reduce their considerations of society to

groundless mathematical models, to artificial simulations of life that have

nothing to do with any important quality of life.

Every computer simulation of a society or an economy is merely the creation

of an abstract artificial and brainless society or an artificial and brainless

economy. Mathematical simulations cannot adequately describe real societies

and real economies although, through adequate politico-financial

enforcement, which is truly a form of selection, we can be constrained to

simulate some economist's simulation of society and economics. A money

economy represents a selection based upon material resources and human

needs, desires, and illusions. The idealized free market system described by

Adam Smith's "invisible hand" represents a vague notion of autonomy, or

self-regulation, inspired in part by Calvinism and in part by Watt's flywheel

governor, but is in no scientific sense a "natural" selection.

Darwin's ideas of "natural selection, fitness, and adaptation" may appear to

make sense in both sports and the socio-economic context of daily life but

they are not scientifically-defined mathematical terms. That they remind us

of the description of an organized market economy is not accidental: Darwin

was strongly influenced during the cruise of the Beagle by his second reading

of Malthus [61], who was both a protestant preacher and a worldly

39
philosopher. Terms like "selection" and "adaptation" are reminiscent of

Adam Smith's vague "invisible hand" rather than of scientifically well-

defined processes like the dissociation and recombination of DNA molecules

described by quantum mechanics or chemical kinetics.

In an attempt to model the origin of life, chemical kinetic equations have

been used to try either to discover or to invent Darwinism at the molecular

level [35] but the use of that terminology seems either superfluous or forced: a

deterministic system of ordinary differential equations, whether chemical

kinetic or not, can be described by the relatively precise, standard terminology

of dynamical systems theory (stability, attractors, etc.). A stochastic system of

chemical kinetic equations can be described by purely dynamic terminology

combined with additional terms like "most probable distribution" and

"fluctuations". There is far less reason to believe that Darwin's socio-

economic terminology applies at the macromolecular level than there was,

before 1925, to believe that the language of the Bohr model correctly described

the motions of electrons relative to nuclei in hydrogen and helium atoms.

There are two main sources of Darwin's vague notion of "natural selection".

The social-Darwinist origin of the phrase is Malthus's socio-economic

doctrine, which derives from Calvinism [61] and can be traced through the

late medieval revival of puritanism by Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli back to

the neo-Platonist St. Augustine [6], who bequeathed to the west the notion of

selection called "predestination". In "predestination" humans are divided

completely arbitrarily into "the elect" and "the damned" (according to Luther,

man is only an ass ridden by both God and the devil, with no choice

whatsoever as to his ultimate fate [62]). Here, "selection" is not a

40
mathematical idea that describes the time-evolution of a dynamical system.

The second and only scientific motivation for Darwin's vague idea of

"natural selection" came from plant and animal breeding, which he

mislabeled as "artificial selection." Plant and animal breeding constitute the

only true case of selection because they proceed via manipulating certain

initial conditions in order to try to achieve a desired result.

Darwinists, true to their Aristotelian heritage, are condemned to argue

endlessly to try to find out what their terminology means because that

terminology is, from a scientific standpoint (empiric or theoretic), completely

undefined.

The scientific foundation of organic evolution was established in Darwin's

time by Mendel, who chose to become an Augustinian monk out of financial

necessity [39] and was trained more in mathematics and physics than in

biology. In contrast with Luther and Calvin, Mendel was not Augustinian in

education and outlook: he was even a lecturer in experimental physics for a

while, and approached the problem of heredity via isolation of cause and

effect in the spirit of a physicist (or a good auto mechanic2 ).

Darwin and his contemporaries, in contrast, accepted a holistic (or

"integrated") picture of heredity that made the understanding of genetics

impossible [64]. It was only after Mendel's reductionist discovery that some

biologists began to dislodge themselves from the teleological notion of

organic evolution as progress toward a goal predetermined by a selector (or

2 Personally, I would not entrust my auto to a self-proclaimed "holist" for

trouble-shooting prior to necessary repairs. See also Ginsburg [63b] for a
nonmathematical alternative to holism in the social sciences.

41
read by an "oracle" capable of "infinite knowledge" of both future and past).

By ignoring "the whole" in favor of the most important parts inferred from

performing simple, controlled experiments, Mendel found the key that

divorced the study of heredity from unsystematic tinkering and socio-

economic doctrine and changed it into a precise mathematical science [64b].

Today, Darwinist concepts play a part in genetics research that is comparable

to the role played by "waves" in high energy physics. "Wave-particle duality",

rather than the Dirac-Feynman interpretation of quantum mechanics, is still

taught in physics and chemistry courses, but you may scour the literature to

no avail in an attempt to find reference to this cumbersome and unnecessary

philosophic principle in particle physics research papers.

Human history is narrative. This includes the statistics of socio-economic

phenomena, which constitute only one very small part of the entire

narrative, a quantitative part. There is no reason to expect that the

uncontrolled approximations of system theory modelling can tell us as much,

quantitatively or qualitatively, about social or individual behavioral

phenomena as we can learn from experience and by reading history and

novels (see [65] for an uncontrolled approximation to the description of some

of the consequences of the unrestricted mechanization). The reason why it is

illusory to expect to discover objective laws of human history, including the

history ("time-evolution") of socio-economic development, was explained

prosaically in 1952:

"There can be no 'pure history'---history-in-itself, recorded from nobody's

point of view, for nobody's sake. The most objective history conceivable is

still a selection and an interpretation, necessarily governed by some special

42
interests and based on some particular beliefs. It can be more nearly objective

if those interests and beliefs are explicit, out in the open, where they can be

freely examined and criticized. Historians can more nearly approach the

detachment of the physicist when they realize that the historical 'reality' is

symbolic, not physical, and that they are giving as well as finding meanings.

The important meanings of history are not simply there, lined up, waiting to

be discovered."

Herbert J. Muller, in The Uses of the Past [65]

One dimensional life

"The nineteenth century, in western Europe and North America, saw the

beginning of a process, today being completed by corporate capitalism, by

which every tradition which has previously mediated between man and

nature was broken."

John Berger, in About Looking [66]

John Berger, in a very beautiful essay introducing the latest edition of Pig

Earth [67], emphasizes what he calls the peasants' view of "circular time" in

contrast with the abstract idea of linear time used in Newtonian mechanics. A

related viewpoint was developed earlier by the Spengler [68], who was one is

three historians who attempted to construct evidence for a grand scheme

according to which human "history" evolves.

Following the anti-Newtonian Goethe, Spengler imagined human societies

as "organisms" moving toward a "destiny". "Destiny" represents a vague idea

of organic determinism that Goethe assumed to be in conflict with

43
mechanistic time-evolution that proceeds via local cause and effect. "Destiny"

was imagined to be impossible to describe via mathematical ideas, via

Newtonian-style mechanism. In trying to make a distinction between global

"destiny" and local cause and effect Spengler was not aware of the idea of

attractors in dynamical systems theory, whereby time evolution mimics

"destiny" but proceeds purely mechanically according local cause and effect.

The Lie-Klein idea of invariance of geometry under coordinate

transformations, the forerunner of Nöther's theorem on symmetry,

invariance, and conservation laws in physics, may have inspired Spengler's

attempt to compare entirely different cultures, widely separated in time and

space, as they evolved toward "destinies" that he identified as fully-developed

civilizations.

Spengler characterized western (European/North American) "civilization"

in the following way: the entire countryside is dominated, Roman-style, by a

few extremely overpopulated cities called megalopolises. Traditional cultures,

derived from man's historic experience of wresting survival directly from

nature, have been replaced by the abstract driving force of late civilization, the

spirit of money-making. Spengler identified the transition from early Greek

culture to late Roman civilization as an earlier example of the nearly

"universal" evolution from local tribal culture to money-driven civilization.

In modern and postmodern civilization, in a single uncontrolled

approximation, all traditions and ideas that interfere with "progress" defined

as large-scale and efficient economic development are rejected as unrealistic

or irrelevant in the face of a one-dimensional quantitative position whose

units may be dollars or marks. The dialogue paraphrased below can be found

44
on pg. 16 the book Complexity, Metaphors, Models, and Reality [32] about

complex adaptable systems in biology, economics, and other fields. A, A', and

A'', who are paraphrased, are theoretical physicists.

A: Why try to define measures of complexity? A measure of complexity is just

a number and that doesn't tell you anything about the system. Assume that

there's a particular state that you want to create, a slightly better state of the

economy, for example. Suppose that you want to know how complicated that

problem is to solve on a computer, and that you're able to characterize

complexity. One of the proposals of A' for defining the complexity of a

problem is 'what's the minimum amount of money you'd need in order to

solve it?'

A'': The cost is proportional to computer time.

A: Then maybe the unit of complexity should be "money". If you're able to

formalize the difficulty of solving the problem of making the economy

slightly better, and you find out that you can measure its complexity in terms

of dollars or yen, then that kind of measure would be extremely useful.

The prediction of a computable chaotic trajectory is limited, decimal by

decimal or bit by bit, by computation time, but there are also integrable many

body problems that are not complex but also require large amounts of marks

or dollars. A'' also asserts in the same book Complexity (pg. 11) that low

dimensional chaos is "not complex in a true sense: ... the number bits

required for specification of where you are is highly limited." In part, this
assertion is false: note that the binary specification of a single state xn in the

45
logistic map f(x) = 4x(1-x) requires precisely N(n) = 2n(No - 2) + 2 bits, where No

is the number of bits in any simple initial condition xo = .ε1...εNo000... . If the

string representing xn is arbitrarily truncated to m≤N(n) bits, then after on the

order of m iterations the first bit (and all other bits) in xn', where n' ≈ n + m, is

completely wrong [7]. Multiplication of two finite binary strings of arbitrary

length cannot be carried out on any fixed-state machine [5], and if

multiplication is done incorrectly at any stage then after only a few more
iterations the bits in xn cannot be known even to one-bit accuracy. I expect that

the complexity of a dynamical system, like fractal dimensions and Liapunov

exponents, can not be described by a single number.

"Paradise...was..the invention of a relatively leisured class. ... Work is the

condition for equality. ... bourgeois and Marxist ideals of equality presume a

world of plenty, they demand equal rights before a cornucopia ... to be

constructed by science and the advancement of knowledge. ... The peasant

ideal of equality recognizes a world of scarcity ... mutual fraternal aid in

struggling against this scarcity and a just sharing of what the world produces.

Closely connected with the peasant's recognition, as a survivor, of scarcity is

his recognition of man's relative ignorance. He may admire knowledge and

the fruits of knowledge but he never supposes that the advance of knowledge

reduces the extent of the unknown. ... Nothing in his experience encourages

him to believe in final causes ... . The unknown can only be eliminated

within the limits of a laboratory experiment. Those limits seem to him to be

naive.

John Berger, in Pig Earth [67]

Danksagung

46
Dieser Aufsatz basiert teilweise auf meinem Eröffnungsvortrag beim Winter

seminar März 1996 auf dem Zeinisjoch. Mein Dank gilt Professor Dr. Peter

Plath, der mich zu diesem Vortrag eingeladen hat und auch zu dieser

schriftlichen Form ermunterte, sowie Familie Lorenz für ihre liebenswürdige

Bewirtung auf dem Zeinisjoch. Obgleich der größte Teil des Seminars auf

Deutsch abgehalten wurde, entschied ich mich doch, meinen Vortrag auf

Englisch zu halten. Mein Deutsch hätte doch nicht ausgereicht, komplizierten

Gedankengänge präzise darzustellen wiederzugeben.

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52
Figure Captions

1. Samuelson's question: Is it a bird or an antelope? Answer: neither, it's a

continuous line between two points plus a closed curve that, unlike both

birds and antelopes, is topologically equivalent to a straight line plus a circle

(from Samuelson [3]).

2. Successive maxima zn of a numerically-computed time series x3(t) for the

Lorenz model are plotted against each other (from McCauley [21]). The

drawing of a single continuous curve through all of these points would

violate the time-reversibility.

3. Assignment of the symbols L and R for a unimodal map (from McCauley

[21]).

4. The complete binary tree defines the topologic universality class of the

binary tent map, and all unimodal maps of the unit interval that peak at or

above unity and contract intervals exponentially fast in backward iteration

(from McCauley [21]).

5. An n-bit sliding window (shown for n = 1, 2, and 3) is used to read a section

of a binary symbol sequence in order to discover the corresponding orbital

statistics, described by histograms with 2n bins (from McCauley [21]).

53