God given the credit...but maybe order HAS to come from chaos

[Iamme]

I have pondered this for a long time.

I think that if we can truly come to an understanding regarding the truth of this, the closer to an answer we will have if it took God to create order from chaos.

Maybe order HAS to come from chaos, because it has nowhere else to go. Chaos can't hardly get MORE chaotic, can it? So...maybe order comes out of it at least once in a while.

This thought occured to me, again, today, after I untied a plastic bag that tied itself in the tree branches, (from flying in the wind) just like someone tied it there.

Or, take how one relies on a grappling hook, chaoticly flying through the air, to almost always tie itself around some protrusion. Is this simply one form of chaos creating some other form of chaos, or, is there indeed something to some of these things where we can say with certainty, that order came from chaos?

I have made posts before saying that it be unlikely that if you took a Lincoln Log set and threw a little figure of Abraham Lincoln in the mix, plus threw in a little miniature watch, that if you shook the set enough times and dumped it all out on a table enough times, that you would be able to pour out a completed log home with Abraham Lincoln standing inside with the watch on his wrist. I think we can all agree that such a feat would never occur even if tossed tens of gazillions of trillions of times.

But, maybe this is a poor argument. Maybe certain things, based on certain laws, do allow certain forms of order to come out of certain forms of chaos.

I would like further input from fellow posters here who might be able to give good examples of orderly things that indeed occur randomly from what we would think of as chaos. Maybe if enough examples are given, our awe of "order" would change.

[Dr Adequate]

I have pondered this for a long time.

I think that if we can truly come to an understanding regarding the truth of this, the closer to an answer we will have if it took God to create order from chaos.

Maybe order HAS to come from chaos, because it has nowhere else to go. Chaos can't hardly get MORE chaotic, can it? So...maybe order comes out of it at least once in a while. This was very much what Epicurus thought.

If you have complete choas, then anything can arise, including an orderly, self-perpetuating system.

[Humphreys]

Are you completely serious?

I'm sure this isn't the first time someone has told you, or you've realized, that order can come from chaos...

What about snow crystals?

[Outhere]

Then there's the old song, best sung when drunk--"We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here..." to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

[Soapy Sam]

Iamme- Google Robert May & Chaos and brouse some of the links. Here's one.
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/chaos.shtml

Chaotic behaviour can emerge from quite simple systems, but the opposite also happens . Order can spontaneously arise from chaos.

Mind you- I'm unsure if throwing a grapnel at a branch is so much chaotic as just incredibly dangerous. Contrary to the impression Hollywood gives us, throwing a grapnel straight up is a perilous business and unlikely to succeed at the first attempt.

[UrsulaV]

I was gonna say--something flying through the air is not neccessarily a particularly chaotic thing. Generally you try to fling a grapple in a particular direction, at least. Chaos would have your grapple whipping wildly in all directions, and I suspect the only order it would end in is "You. Call me an ambulance. Now." (If one wanted to be particularly incredulous, I suppose one could rhapsodize about the astonishingly orderly way in which you'll now require stitches, but...)

As for the argument, there are plenty of examples of order emerging from relative chaos. If I throw a chaotic jumble of rocks into a jar and shake it wildly, a crude order will emerge as the heaviest rocks end up on the bottom and the lightest rocks end up on the top. Stuff sorts itself out into crude order all the time, no intelligence required. Dump roiling mucky water into a jar, and it'll settle out into orderly layers the same way, given gravity and time.

[Dr Adequate]

As for the argument, there are plenty of examples of order emerging from relative chaos. If I throw a chaotic jumble of rocks into a jar and shake it wildly, a crude order will emerge as the heaviest rocks end up on the bottom and the lightest rocks end up on the top. I think what you'll actually find is that the largest rocks end up on top. Your point still holds, though

[UrsulaV]

I think what you'll actually find is that the largest rocks end up on top. Your point still holds, though

Hee! Shows I'm not actually doin' it...

[Dr Adequate]

Vibration Induced Granular Segregation --- the Brazil Nut and Reverse Brazil Nut Effects (http://www.science.uva.nl/research/cr/GranularSegregation/)

I just had a nice thought. Take a clear container with a lid. Fill it randomly with large red marbles and small blue marbles. Shake it vigorously in front of a religious fundamentalist while shouting "Look, a constant force acting on a random process creates order you *********** idiot!"

[Oolon Colluphid]

Chaos is an illusion. As Newton, Maxwell, Einstein have shown, there are fundamental laws operating on all things, all the time. Take strange attractors, for instance. Drive a (seemingly) random system into 'chaos', and a pattern invariably emerges (AIMI).

[homer]

I remember seeing order in chaos during my mathematical studies some years ago . You can actually see some of these patterns using the fractint fractal generator which I think is still available on the internet . There is some useful stuff about chaos in a book called ,surprise , CHAOS , by James Gleick .
One of the most suprising thing is a curve called the Koch curve which is infinitely long yet covers a finite area . As I sometimes say , My brain hurts !

[wollery]

http://dailykitten.com/kittens/1130047933salem-sentado.jpg
http://dailykitten.com/

[Iacchus]

I have made posts before saying that it be unlikely that if you took a Lincoln Log set and threw a little figure of Abraham Lincoln in the mix, plus threw in a little miniature watch, that if you shook the set enough times and dumped it all out on a table enough times, that you would be able to pour out a completed log home with Abraham Lincoln standing inside with the watch on his wrist. I think we can all agree that such a feat would never occur even if tossed tens of gazillions of trillions of times.Yeah, but how did the logs, Abraham Lincoln and the wrist watch get there in the first place? ;)

[UrsulaV]

I think we can all agree that such a feat would never occur even if tossed tens of gazillions of trillions of times.

I don't agree to that.

Wildly, wildly improbable, perhaps, but as there is, to my knowledge, nothing actively preventing it except for sheer improbability, I'm not going to say that no throw could EVER result in that.

I'd be awfully surprised, mind you, but if you're tossing things tens of gazillions of trillions of time...well, shoot an infinite number of bullets at an infinite number of monkeys, and eventually you may kill Shakespeare.

[Cosmo]

I don't agree to that.

Wildly, wildly improbable, perhaps, but as there is, to my knowledge, nothing actively preventing it except for sheer improbability, I'm not going to say that no throw could EVER result in that.

I'd be awfully surprised, mind you, but if you're tossing things tens of gazillions of trillions of time...well, shoot an infinite number of bullets at an infinite number of monkeys, and eventually you may kill Shakespeare.

Seconded. Iamme, improbable does not equal impossible.