Chaos and Complexity

Speaker: Professor Celso Grebogi
Affiliation: University of Aberdeen

Abstract

Never in the annals of science and technology has emerged a field so broad and so multi-disciplinary as chaotic and complex dynamics. The history of chaos as a scientific discipline started with James Clerk Maxwell in the mid-eighteen century, while a Professor at the Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. Maxwell was working, among many other things, on the theory of ideal gases. He, as you may know, is perhaps best remembered for his contribution to electromagnetism, the famous Maxwell’s equations. He lived at the time in which the intellectual world was fascinated with the concept of a predictable, clockwork Universe. Yet he had the independence of mind not to agree with this scientifically accepted paradigm in his scientific writings. Maxwell was the first person to understand systems having intrinsic unpredictability, which is the hallmark of chaos. In his own words “…when an infinitely small variation in the present state may bring about a finite difference in the state of the system in a finite time, …the condition renders impossible the prediction of future events…”. This realisation has had broad scientific and philosophical implications for the understanding, analysis, prediction, and control of natural and man-made systems. By following the tradition of dynamics even further, complexity lends the systems not only to be unpredictable, but they are made up of many states that are interrelated in a complicated manner with the emergence of both ordered and random behaviours. As chaos, it fosters and promotes multi-disciplinary interactions across both organisational lines and traditional disciplinary boundaries.