{Chaotic Determinism (+ Extracts) [continued (21)]}[4th August 1988]

[Redbook5:259][19880804:1705h]{Chaotic Determinism (+ Extracts) [continued (21)]}[4th August 1988]

.1705

[continued]

*[But] cf Pippard (ref 218)** ‘This habit of divergence, leading ultimately to uncorrelated behaviour of elements that were initially hardly distinguishable, is characteristic of all chaotic systems. However well you know the initial state there will come a time, usually a rather well-defined “horizon of predictability”, beyond which no useful statement can be made about details of behaviour.’***

And: ‘What the study of chaos shows is that there are countless processes which will never be brought to a state of computer predictability, however well the basic laws are known, and which will have to be studied in their own terms if anything useful is to be said.’***

I think this refers to practice rather than theory, and is therefore consistent with Tritton.**** I was not absolutely clear on this point after reading Gleick# (probably because I hadn’t thought about it carefully).

*[See last previous entry]

**[Redbook5:218-239][19880722:2307]{The Sphere}[22nd July 1988]

***[Brian Pippard, reviewing James Gleick's 'Chaos: Making a New Science' in ]T[imes ]L[iterary ]S[upplement ]22-28/7/88, p800.

[Sir Alfred Brian Pippard, FRS (7 September 1920 – 21 September 2008), was a British physicist. He was Cavendish Professor of Physics from 1971 until 1984 and an Honorary Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, of which he was the first President. He was educated at Clifton College. (Wikipedia)]

****[Not so fast…. Pippard would appear to trump Tritton (see last previous entry inc 2^nd fn), & his ‘However well you know the initial state’ & ‘however well the basic laws are known’ (above) seem considered. <20180918>]

#[Gleick, ‘Chaos, Making a New Science’, Heinemann, London, 1988]

[The whole of this entry is a marginal note inserted to the left of the ms text of the last previous and next entries.]

[continues]

[PostedBlogger20112018]