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To: E. Charters who wrote (14877)	6/30/2006 5:42:04 PM
From: Gib Bogle	Respond to of 78419

".. it is purely assumptive that the system of many complex and various inputs behaves chaotically because it is complex..." I didn't notice anyone saying that. To repeat the point I made earlier, the system of equations that Lorenz was using to model weather were EXTREMELY simple, in fact just 3 linked first order nonlinear differential equations. (The nonlinearity is the key). What amazed him, and everyone else who was paying attention, was that such a simple system could generate chaotic behaviour. As I understand it (I'm not a weather modeller) the aspect of Lorenz's simple system that leads to mathematically chaotic behaviour is an outcome of the physics. Note this (quoting Wikipedia): "Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder." It is very easy to demonstrate chaos if you happen to have Matlab on your computer. I agree that there is a sort of averaging-smoothing that takes place in the real world, but it also appears that this doesn't eliminate the unpredictability. Another intractable field where chaos rears its ugly head is turbulence. The basic physics is well understood, but we can't predict turbulent flow in the details. Horace Lamb was quoted as saying in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic." en.wikipedia.org