Assessment of Chaos Theory

To assess whether chaos theory is a good theory one must first do two things - define chaos theory itself and then define what one means in general as a good theory. The initial proposition is the easier of the two, and so is taken up first in this paper.

Chaos theory is in fact a broader-ranging set of ideas than is usually described by the title "theory", for it puts forth not a proposition about a particular and specific set of events (such as in the case in something like the theory of angular momentum) but instead makes a rather sweeping generalization about the way the natural - as well as perhaps also the social - world is put together. Chaos theory is in fact a sort of meta-theory, the basic ideas of which can be extracted and applied in a variety of situations. Some of these applications are fairly narrow and straightforward, such as attempts to predict possible interactions between global weather systems and local weather patterns or to create models for the way disruptions occur in a rising column of smoke. Others are substantially broader and even rather metaphorical, such as attempts to explain wide-ranging social changes.

In the most formal sense, chaos theory is the body of mathematical theory that is used to examine and explain the breakdown of ordered systems into chaotic ones - or into systems in which no single ordered system holds sway. (These chaotic systems may alter regroup to ordered systems; in fact, this is ooften the case if one is refe

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Category: Psychology - A