12.4. Complexity and dynamics
There is another approach, namely to study complexity as such – using complexity theory, popularly and somewhat imprecisely called chaos theory.
That is a relatively new science branch developed in the 1960s and 70s. It is about understanding relative, dynamic, complex systems.
The laws of chaos govern the undulating patterns, the «murmuration», in the flocks of starlings over Rome and the wanderings of wildebeest on the Serengeti plain in Tanzania.
They control economics and group thinking, teaching and artificial intelligence.
They are used to calculate the capacity of transport systems and power supply networks.
They are observed in politics, art, fashion, the Christmas celebration, humour, language, pandemics and not least, the weather, which was the field where chaos theory was developed.
Complexity theory can be applied to everything in this world because everything is relative, dynamic, in motion.
«Everything flows», as an ancient Greek said around 500 BC.
The laws of chaos thus apply to both material and thought-driven phenomena. Both billiard balls and jokes.
Note that.
This is the method we are going to use.
We will see what happens when we start with the zero point for the universe's formation and then apply the laws of complexity to explain how evolution proceeds from there. Besides, we have our «engine» that generates it all; emergence.
Step by step, we will include one phenomenon after another until the world has become the way we experience it now. You will see that the same, relatively simple laws provide good explanations throughout the chain and in all contexts, even where the material and mental meet directly.
Precisely the fact that the laws of chaos work across the mental and physical allow us to develop a theory of the world that is idealistic, i.e. purely mental, but at the same time gives physical effects – and vice versa.
Complexity theory in itself is still not enough.