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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Adam Getchell <acgetchell@*******.EDU>
Subject: Re: Chaos and rules
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 10:39:29 -0700
>I don't think so. It's just like the theory of chaos (which I like very
>much)...Yes there are rules, there are laws and formulas which things obey,

Right, but even chaos theory has strange attactors and other artifacts
around which a fractal pattern of order may spontaneously emerge ... ;-)

>So knowing the rules and laws does not neccessarily mean you can predict
>everything. That is because those rules are too complex. And the rules of
>magic are very complex. So are those of psychology.

Most of physics involves non-linear partial differential equations,
impossible to solve except under very specific conditions. The three-body
gravitation problem is an example. In general, it is impossible to solve
the dynamical equations for 3 generalize bodies of mass ... however, if one
of the bodies is essentially negligible compared to the other two (say, a
rocket compared with the Earth-Moon system) you can get very good results.
However, physicists and mathematicians are very good at coming up with the
tricks to solve these intractable equations ... and chaos theory is one of
them. [Chaos is really, simply, a system of n non-linear partial
differential equations of degree m.]

>Blix

--Adam

acgetchell@*******.edu
"Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability in the opponent." --Sun Tzu

Further Reading

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