David Peat

From Clockwork to Chaos 123Kolmogorov, Arnold, and Moser (KAM) confirmed that chaos andstability could exist within the solar system. In most situations the orbitsof the planets remain stable for tens of millions of years, but forcertain critical arrangements of orbits, the tiny pull of one planet onanother planet accumulates and “feeds back” to the first planet. Thismay be the explanation for the gaps in Saturn’s rings. Calculations showthat if a rock were placed in one of these gaps its orbit would becomeso erratic that it would fly off into outer space or collide with materialin the other rings. A similar explanation may also account for the absenceof a planet lying between Mars and Jupiter. Matter that attemptedto coalesce in this region may then have been subject to erratic forces.As a result, instead of forming a planet, it gave rise to the asteroid belt,a collection of rocks and mini planets.KAM’s approach, along with high-speed computers, applied notonly to the solar system but also to a host of other situations, includingweather, water waves, the stock market, fluctuation in the size of insectpopulations, the spreading of cracks and faults in metals, traffic patterns,brain activity, heart beats, prison riots, the mutual interaction ofcertain chemicals, and turbulence in a pan of heated water. Todaymathematicians, engineers, physicists, chemists, scientists, biologists,environmentalists, economists, sociologists, and even psychotherapistsuse ideas from chaos theory and work on ever more complex systemsto the point where they find themselves joined by artists, designers,animators, filmmakers, composers, and computer hackers.A variety of names is associated with this new science: nonlinearsystems theory, catastrophe theory, chaos theory, complexity theory,self-organizing systems, open systems, general systems theory, fractals,strange attractors, far-from-equilibrium systems, autopoiesis, and soon. In popular accounts they all tend to be lumped together under thegeneral rubric of chaos theory. As with quantum theory, chaos theoryplaces strict limits on certainty. It indicates that we must always bewilling to accept some degree of “missing information.”But what exactly is chaos? Take something as simple as a pan ofwater on the stove. Water at the bottom of the pan begins to heat and,being warmer, it is less dense and therefore tends to rise. Water at thetop of the pan, at room temperature, is heavier and begins to fall. Warm