THIS is what the guy say on his site.


New discoveries in the science and mathematics of Chaos research are revolutionizing our world view. They reveal a hidden fractal order underlying all seemingly chaotic events. The fractals are intricate and beautiful. They repeat basic patterns, but with an infinity of variations and forms. The world-view emerging from this scientific research is new, and yet at the same time ancient. With a little thought, and the help of this web, you can better understand the significance of Chaos and Fractals. You can see how to use these insights in your life to create a bridge between Science and Spirituality.
It is possible to apply this new knowledge to better understand your life, to live autonomously, based on freedom, and your own contact with the Source of the Universe, the Infinite. The revolutionary new Fractal mind-set discovered by scientists and mathematicians can help you to see the beauty and meaning that borders all chaos. These fractals are in space, as shown by the graphics on these webs, and in time, as shown in all life, including your own. We are born and die, we wake up and fall asleep, the sun rises and sets, we breathe in and out. There are basic patterns and structure to time and space that provide a unifying coherence. As the mystic sages of long ago put it, "as above, so below."

This web will explain some of the science and math of Chaos. It will also suggest how you can apply this new knowledge to fashion your own philosophy of life. A philosophy that will help you to cope with and understand disorder, to realize the underlying fractal structure behind the near infinite, and often baffling variety of life experiences.

 Chaos and fractals do NOT go hand in hand.  The statement rejects itself.  Fractals are complex patterns formed by a simple formula or smaller pattern.  When you take a bunch of small squares and look at them up close, they look like squares.  If you step back, they look like a screen door.  Further back and they look like cloth, flapping in the win.  They almost seem alive.  Some would actually say they were without looking closer.  They are happy with this reality.  It makes them feel comfortable, safe.

 What he's saying is that we haven't reached a point where we can see the basic building blocks determining the order of things.  We are only seeing the screen door, not the squares.  These patterns are so complex that we could not hope to understand them with today's technology and world view.  Being stuck in a world where people still imagine an invisible being is pulling strings is halting our exploration of this frontier.

Personally, I feel there are things smaller than sub-atomic particles even.  We simply do not have the technology to see them.  These things are all vibrating or orbiting each other producing patterns that we depict as intelligent life, but in fact, it's a VERY complex fractal.

I think that might be the most propaganda-laden account of scientific progress that I've ever read.

I agree that some truly new and interesting discoveries on how the universe works have happened and will continue to happen, many of them thanks to new scientific paradigms that embrace chaotic principles more fully, but I disagree that there was any kind of willing concerted effort to shove this math and science under the rug.

Question: What does that guy mean by "negentropy"? From your interpretation you make it sound like there is actual negative entropy going on, rather than a local (for certain definitions of "local") effect consistent with increased overall entropy.Is that true?? And if so, how big can this negentropic effect be?

Oh, and I think that the OP doesn't really have all that much to do (directly) with either fractals or God. So the title is IMO only 1/3 accurate.

After all, fractals are PATTERNS, and what's amazing is how endlessly intricate the patterns can be despite being mathematically relatively simple, which seems to me to be the opposite of your "disorder and unpredictability" theme.

Also:


Here, have some fractalicious broccoli.

Fractals are basicly the math that helps prove chaos theory.

"The main catalyst for the development of chaos theory was the electronic computer. Much of the mathematics of chaos theory involves the repeated iteration of simple mathematical formulas, which would be impractical to do by hand. Electronic computers made these repeated calculations practical, while figures and images made it possible to visualize these systems."

"In 1975 Mandelbrot published The Fractal Geometry of Nature, which became a classic of chaos theory."

Look up how chaos theory came about.

1) How is this propaganda?

2) To be honest I'm not completely sure what he was trying to say with negentropy, but my interpretation is that he is saying order is increasing not decreasing, and so negative entropy is happening on a grand scale. And he seems to be indicating this is through the attractors, and that he thinks the strange attractors is evidence of god. Or he is using god as a metaphor for things we don't know.

3) He wasn't saying chaos theory was being swept under the rug but rather people were ignoring it because they thought there were better explinations. look Chaos theroy started around 1900 but really didn't start making major head way until the 60's.

Also Fractals defenitly belong in the title, I don't care how much he mentions them directly they're an underlining part of how we came to know chaos theory. As for god, well maybe I read one to many statements on this site about how only stupid people believe in god or maybe I just wanted some people to responed and thought it would help. Either way it caught your attention, and if its the only reason you read and responded then I'm glad I put it there.

I skimmed the article, but the gist of it I agree with.

How is it propaganda? The whole piece oozes disdian for the "OLD science" that was completely dead wrong and couldn't even cope with the IDEA that there was something fundamental that they were missing. It made it sound to me like it was saying that the "crumbling", decadent old paradigm was washed away by the shining light brought by the "brave early explorers", the noble Chaoticians. And take this passage:

There was no room for chaos and so it was conveniently swept under the rug. The inevitable outcome of the ordered machine view was the complete winding down of the clock, the end of time in complete entropy - the second law of thermodynamics where everything tends to breakdown, to dissipate. This big picture of science naturally spawned the "God is dead" philosophies, nihilism, the life nausea of existentialism, behavioralism, communism and the like. Now with the Chaos theories this paradigm is itself dead. A whole new scientific view has been born, one much more in accord with an organic view, the common law, and philosophies of hope and spirit.

The entropic worldview of science gave rise to COMMUNISM? Srsly?

Paul Davies doesn't appear to be saying that kind of thing, but the article in your OP most definitely is.

And as for why it took so long for Chaos Theory to be accepted, well, you have to admit that such a far-reaching overhaul of the very bedrock of our science is something that would -- and should -- be subjected to thorough rigorous criticism and testing before toppling old paradigms that have worked so well (with tiny variances that could only be RELIABLY detected relatively recently) for so long?

I doubt very much that it's a coincidence that a science that depends so heavily on the accuracy and number-crunching ability of computerized tools had to wait for the advent of computerized tools to gain wide acceptance.


Moving on:
And I agree with fractals being important to chaos theory but if I put "biology and evolution" in the title of an article I think you'd expect more than one or two throwaway mentions going towards evolution.

But yeah, I think more people need to know about this kind of stuff.

You made me laugh "brave early explorers, the noble Chaoticians." makes me want to write a story "Chaoticians take down those commy bastards"

The sad thing is I commpletely missed the communist comment.

have you ever heard of a progam called MojoWorld?
It makes huge worlds (planets) completly made from fractals

Everything you see is fractals, and it is an entire world.

 I disagree.  From what I can tell most scientists in fact do go out of their way to hide and marginilize any data that conflicts with their theroeies.

This happened a lot in younger days when science wasn't a buisness, and does so even more now when sciene is a buisness and your grants or funding relies on your theory being right and you making progress down the road.

Small indicators are hidden instead of explored opon and much much time is wasted by many scientists.

It's not like it's a big conspiracy but I think the way we fund science now a days tends to have a very establishment stick with what we think we know aspect to it.

Of course this could just be my natural pessimism due to the fact that a lot of fields of study I am most familiar with tend to use faulty expirments and ignore or marginalize data all the time in order to prove some social ill is a problem of something said group wants banned or regulated so they can have more political clout.

Everyone wants to be that famous scientist who comes up with an amazing breakthrough, but nobody wants to be the guy who follows up and tests something counter to his theory only to have all his funding pulled, possibly not make it far enough into his new theory and be forced to attempt to find work elsewhere.

Some others just don't want to admit they were wrong and hide data... since the discourse among competeting scientists now a days resembles that of internet posters... just with much more flowery talking.  Neither side wants to admit they are wrong even when shown proof or near proofs.