Chaos theory is a mathematical concept that challenges some of the most accepted beliefs about the nature of universe and reality. The theory claims that natural systems are controlled by mysterious forces called ‘strange attractors’, such that these systems are simultaneously random and determined – a conclusion that undermines the laws of logic on which so much of our discourse depends. This implies that all natural systems, which includes human identity, is a complex phenomenon which is based on multiple factors that are both random and deterministic. When applied to some of our famous characters in literature like Hamlet, this theory explains the inability to decide in Hamlet as a result of numerous other factors.
Chaos theory, unlike the Newtonian universe founded on stability and order, teaches that instability and disorder are not only widespread in nature, but very much essential to the evolution of complexity in our universe.
Mathematically, chaos theory was devised to deal with the dynamics of non-linear systems. Non-linear systems are those that are highly sensitive to initial conditions and the changes in input creates a proportional change in its output. The famous Butterfly effect explains this aspect rather clearly; that is, the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in one part of the world could, theoretically cause a hurricane in another part of the world. An example of a non-linear system in real world is one which involves simultaneously moving bodies like two cars. If at least one body accelerates or decelerates, the system is nonlinear.
In reality, about any non-linear system, all that we can do is to make appropriations which may go right or wrong, depending on the immediate past. In a chaotic system randomness and determinism are simultaneously present, implying that it is both predictable and unpredictable at the same time. To explain this a little further ‘The Schrodinger’s Cat’ experiment can be used.
If a cat is put in a closed box with a flask of cyanide gas and contains a radio-active source and Geiger counter that can trigger a hammer to smash the flask everyone a nucleus decays; at any instant after one minute, the cat will be in a hybrid of state of unreality in which it is both dead and alive. The reason is that, we can only assume that one half of the nucleus has decayed and the other half hasn’t; in either case if the cat along with the system is considered as one quantum system, like the nucleus which is in a superimposition of two states, the cat is also dead and alive simultaneously. This means that in a chaotic system, even those that are logically impossible is possible. It is the nature of the system to be able to exist in such states of unreality and it is not an impossibility as far as a chaotic system is considered.
