When we hear the word chaos we shudder and want to flee from such a place at once. In truth, what we fear is a change in our comfort zone. The only way to feel safe is to stay within our comfort zone and to make sure that not even the shadow of chaos falls on it. A predictable life allows us to leave the house without fear. Knowing the weather forecast, not getting caught in the rain, having alternative clothes with us depending on where we are going; this way of thinking enables us to build our lives and our future with confidence. As Aristotle states at the opening of his Metaphysics: “All human beings, by their nature, desire to know.” For a human being does not merely want to live, to be alive; he also wants to know and grasp the reason and the value of his life, as his very creation requires…
Philosophy is most often discussed as a body of questions that cannot be answered. Today the questions of epistemology are being answered thanks to science. In defining analytic judgments, Kant also makes use of the concept of thinking. While the concept of thinking, in its positive sense, exemplifies analytic judgments, in its negative sense it points to synthetic judgments. For in synthetic judgments, the predicate added to the judgment has in no way been thought in the concept of the subject. That is, the predicate can in no way be obtained by analysing the subject. Kant expresses this as follows: “Through analytic judgments our knowledge is in no way extended; rather, the concept I already possess is analysed and made intelligible to myself.”
The knowledge we obtain without making observations also appears before us as a mathematical or physical result of observations made earlier. The best example of this is one of the discoveries of the 19th century, the discovery of Neptune by Le Verrier and Galle. Le Verrier and Galle thought that the orbit of Uranus was being affected by the gravitational pull of another planet. They calculated the position of that planet mathematically and observed it in Germany with the Fraunhofer Telescope. And their observations turned out to be consistent with their predictions. This knowledge of roughly 150 years prepared the ground for the formation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s idea of determinism.
It is known that in the Western world of the 19th century, determinism, which made it possible to intervene in every event occurring in nature and in society, was at its peak. Indeed, in this period, when it was not at all easy to distinguish between the natural and the social sciences because of the effects of the determinist paradigm, determinism did not merely shape the development of science. And this simple, uniform, mechanical image of the universe also spread to many other fields. It led the framers of the American Constitution to build a machine of administration that would ensure control of a government working in perfect harmony, like the cogs of a clock.
In order to repair the political situation of Europe, disrupted by the Napoleonic wars, and to set out and determine the shape Europe would take in the future, all the European States held a great congress in Vienna. The congress was directed by four great powers, namely England, Russia, Austria and Prussia. The congress was presided over by the Austrian Prime Minister, Prince Metternich. At the congress, where the problems that had arisen in Europe after the French Revolution were discussed, the era following the French Revolution was described as the “age of nationalism”. Franz von Metternich, Prime Minister of the multinational Austrian Empire, aimed to create the conditions for the conservative great powers of Europe to act together in order to resolve the problems that the current of nationalism, which he regarded as dangerous, might give rise to. Metternich, who had almost everything he said accepted, was described as the guide of the re-established Europe. Indeed, by calling Metternich “the man who holds the reins of Europe”, they praised him to the skies for a time. This international congress, which conducted its work in the form of commissions, is interesting and important as the first example of its kind.
On his way to the Congress of Vienna to establish the balance of power in Europe, Metternich was carrying in his luggage a copy of the works and articles of Pierre-Simon LAPLACE.
Chaos theory, first voiced by James Yorke and TIEN-YIEN LI in 1975, reminds us of something important. The world does not turn according to a predictable model. Whether we like it or not, chaos is a part of our lives. There are small areas where change takes place, and it is impossible to predict the effects of some events. When it is said, “We never hesitate to say that we must be ready to change any plan at any time, but when it comes to putting this thought into practice we run away,” chaos theory tells us that the outcome of an event depends on different variables. We cannot always predict how the variables affect the outcome. There is always a margin of error, room for change, an error that changes everything at the last moment. Sometimes a small change has a great effect and the whole plan turns into chaos.
In 1961 Edward Lorenz tried to create a computer that could predict the weather. Throughout the process, he observed that the whole system began to exhibit unpredictable behaviour. This happened because of a number-rounding error. Later this experience helped to define the butterfly effect. “If a butterfly flaps its wings in China, the earth is shaken in America.”
The West thoroughly embraced and internalised this chaos theory as the single method it applied to the workings of political and social life, and never wanted to let go of it again. Thanks to this theory, it designed the whole of social life upon it, in order to create order out of chaos. In sociology, it used the possibilities of this chaos as a power in determining social events.
When modelling a system whose behaviour appears uncertain and unpredictable, one of two basic philosophical approaches is adopted: either it is assumed that uncertainty is an intrinsic property of the system, that the system contains within itself an element of randomness that does not obey the principle of causality; or it is accepted that the system is in fact entirely deterministic, that is, it behaves on the basis of definite causal relations, but that there is an uncertainty peculiar to us arising from our lack of knowledge. It is natural that we cannot fully foresee what a system harbouring randomness will do in the future. At best we make probability calculations and may think that in repeated events we can correctly estimate averages and similar statistics. Whereas, when a system modelled as deterministic is in question, it is expected that as science and technology advance we will remedy the gaps in our knowledge of the system, and by modelling the system better and making more precise measurements we will estimate ever better how it will behave. That is, according to the MOVEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE that exists, that we can reach, that we can observe… If we look at it in summary according to a traditional, established acceptance: deterministic systems are in essence predictable; an observer with sufficient knowledge can estimate what the system will do.
Chaos Theory, whose popularity began to rise in the 1970s, overturned what had been learned by rote and, finding ground for itself under particular conditions, clearly set out the view that long-term prediction can never be possible in deterministic systems. Studies on “deterministic chaos” concentrated especially on “stable chaotic regimes”. What is meant by this is a form of motion that a deterministic system sustains without ever repeating itself, which appears random but remains within certain limits and some of whose statistical properties remain constant. This is, in fact, a kind of complex and dynamic state of equilibrium.
Uncertainty is a concept that in everyday language is generally perceived and conveyed as negative. One of the most fundamental reasons for the human anxiety to be rid of uncertainty is that, by nature, he wants to know, and that he is obliged to act. In the various situations that life puts before us, we want the knowledge and models we have to be definite so that we can choose the action that will be most right for us. When there is uncertainty about what result our action will produce, we come face to face with the unease of indecision and the feeling of losing our comfort zone.
At certain times, when social dynamics increase, a number of regulatory mechanisms come into play. With complexity decreasing once again, chaos in the sense of a “stable chaotic regime” can hold out hope for living systems. For both living organisms and societies, “stable chaos”, which is conducive to adapting to conditions by trying various alternatives, to learning, developing, producing solutions and renewing oneself, brings about a peaceful and healthy regime, provided that it is in moderation, measured and balanced. If we think of the opposite, a wholly predictable form of existence, with the repetition of fixed patterns of behaviour, may create a life that is deprived of the adaptation that being alive requires and is therefore unsustainable, even unbearable. That is, life may consist of nothing but a world order remote from thought and science.
If we also look back, as a brief reminder, at what came before these days that we have most recently been living through as the pandemic period of 2020: the never-ending war and violence in the Balkans and the Middle East, the natural resources disappearing in the world, global warming, energy wars and many more like these… Our life, in which we are constantly crushed beneath the shifting of balances and then try once more to draw a small breath… And the US elections we have been awaiting for months! We do not yet know by how much they have multiplied the uncertainty of the pandemic. “The pandemic-stricken election uncertainty of the Golden-Crowned Thursday”. It is exactly the right time to think about the connection between Chaos Theory and these latest events, which everyone in the world has entered a race to predict. Is the world in a random chaos, or is this chaos developing in accordance with causality? Here are our famous questions that we try to recall at every moment: “What happened to us?” and “What more will happen to us?” This problem of ours, I think, gains still more meaning right here.
Keywords: Theory Chaos Napoleon
Translated from the Turkish original.