An article in the Kyeongyang magazine by a computer scientist gives the readers an understanding of Chaos. Originally coming from the Greek word abyss and emptiness. God gave the order to this Chaos and we have the Cosmos.
A new meaning was given to Chaos in the 20th century. Sir James Lighthill who held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the Cambridge University in England at the 300th anniversary of Newton's Principia said that the scientists need to apologize to Newton for misunderstanding the Newtonian laws of motion as if all was predictable.
Chaos Theory is the science of unpredictability. Traditional science dealth with predictable phenomena, however, from the 1960s, Chaos Theory, the nonlinear things are impossible to predict or control.
St. Thomas said in arguing for the existence of God, the movement we see around us was his first proof. Anything that moves must be moved by another. But we cannot have an infinite retrogression of movers, so we come to the something that is not moved, the Unmoved Mover which accounts for all the other movement in the universe. This we understand as God. The writer says Thomas' argument is solid but he would like to insert the word change for motion.
The force that moves material bodies is measured by the science of kinetics which explains the movement of the heavenly bodies. The French astronomer Laplace, an extreme determinist was asked by Napoleon then the emperor of France: why didn't he include God in his book on the heavens. His answer was there was no need for that hypothesis. Showing he was a Deist or atheist.
Contrary to those who believe in a personal God and the Creator of the universe we have the Deists who may believe in God who started everything but is not involved in the world. They deny a personal God and the atheist, the very idea of God is denied. In today's world of science like Einstein and Laplace, we have a great number who are Deists or atheists.
After Newton physicists were sure that they could predict the movement of the heavens. The writer mentions the three body problem—measuring the paths of three bodies in their gravitational interaction—Celebrating his 60th birthday the King of Sweden offered a prize to anyone who would solve the problem. Henri Poincaré did not solve the problem but did receive the prize.
Edward Norton Lorenz an American meteorologist in 1961 working with three weather variables: temperature, atmospheric pressure, and wind velocity and how they relate with one another made a numerical equation to determine their interaction. Briefly, his results are what we call the Butterfly effect. Beginning systems are so sensitive to conditions, results are impossible to predict. The popular expression of this is a butterfly in Mexico could be the cause of a storm in China.
He finishes the article by asking how do we avoid chaos in our lives. His answer is living with the thought that we live, breathe and have our being in God. We have to take time out to meditate. He remembers hearing about John Calvin's belief in predestination as a child, and was appalled by it and was happy to hear about quantum physics and was attracted to its teaching. He ends with the future is not determined and even what is determined cannot be predicted. We need to examine our present surroundings and make our future.
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