"Chaos has become not just theory but also method, not just a canon of beliefs but also a way of doing science."
The mythologies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, see chaos as an entity to be controlled or suppressed, and in the case of the latter two, it was seen as a force that had the potential to revert order back to disorder. They perceived a constant struggle between chaos and order, that is, the ability for one to become the other.
Lightning, one of nature’s best exponents of fractal structure, plays a part in the emergence of order in Chinese and Indian mythology.
The Greeks represented a transition from old mythologies to modern scientific method. In this process, the ideas of chaos were lost through the process of reductionism, culminating in Newton’s all-encompassing theories during the seventeenth century. Although there were still indications that chaos may exist within Newtonian determinism, the technology of the day was insufficient to bring any conclusive evidence.
With the introduction of the computer midway through this century, science had the means to expose chaos, and discover the patterns within it. Since then, chaos has developed into one of science’s best models of the natural world. Fractals have provided the geometric base for chaos theory, with primitive Julia Sets supplying a base for stunning fractal images that are able to mimic plant life and landscapes with incredible realism.
In my personal work on Julia sets, I have adapted Robert May’s graphical representation of bifurcations to produce both 2- and 3-dimensional models. These sequential Julia Sets allow a range of values to be displayed simultaneously, enabling one set to be viewed in the context of several others. This facilitates observation of the changing characteristics of Julia Sets, leading to a greater understanding.
Chaos in mythology and cosmogony possess universality through the constant themes of primordial timelessness and infinity. Universality is also one of the strongest features of chaos theory, where themes cross the borders of scientific disciplines. The concept of infinity is omnipresent in both myth and modern theory.