(and some other complex systems stuff)

• Mobile Compatible •

Note that this page includes some very useful Flash apps (which may not run on many Apple systems).

Lorenz Attractor/"strange attractor"

Here (above) is as an animated .gif of Lorenz's "strange attractor." It describes a system very similar to Clausewitz's Trinity imagery, which has three attractors, but I find the Lorenz system to be especially relevant to Clausewitz's way of describing the variations in political and military ojjectives. (See the very informative Wikipedia article, "Lorenz System," from which the image above was borrrowed.)

And there's a more modern demonstrator at https://highfellow.github.io/lorenz-attractor/attractor.html.

Einstein's Explanation of Brownian Motion

This animation demonstrates Brownian motion. Brownian motion is an old concept and does not really have anything to do with Chaos or Complexity per se—it really is random movement, though it can often look quite like it has some purpose or direction. The big particle can be considered as a dust particle while the smaller particles can be considered as molecules of a gas. On the left is the view one would see through a microscope. To the right is the physical explanation for the "random walk" of the dust particle. This is an animated gif made for computers unable to run Java. The original applet, credits, and a lecture on Brownian Motion can be found at http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109N/more_stuff/Applets/brownian/brownian.html. NOTE: To see the Java applet, you'll need to have the Java plug-in working on your web-browser.

The Three-Body Problem in Newtonian Physics

This FLASH animation is from "Flash Animations for Physics," by David M. Harrison, Department of Physics, University of Toronto. Click the image above to open it (in another window). This is not a pre-drawn cartoon : Newton's equations are actually embedded in the Flash, which simply takes your settings and plots the mathematical output in graphic form. If you check the button for addional independent planets, you should understand that these are not really 'additional' planets—they are identical and don't exert any gravitational influence on one another. So what they really represent is the same planet in four slightly different starting positions. The differing trajectories they follow illustrate, once again, the "Butterfly Effect": very small differences in input can have very large effects on output.

Different settings may reveal this effect in different ways and at different speeds. The default setting is pretty cool. Another setting that makes the larger point reasonably quickly:

Sun 1: 1.38

Sun 2: x initial = 0.4

Check button for 4 independent Planets

Double Pendulum

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Click the image above to go to an .mp4 animation of a double pendulum, an extremely simple system (there are only two points of freedom) that demonstrates deterministic chaos. Focus on the behavior of the red dot. This is an excellent way to demonstrate how complex behavior—even seemingly random behavior—can be created by very simple rules and systems.

Double pendulum | Chaos | Butterfly effect | Computer simulation

This computer simulation shows how data generated by the pendulum can appear like totally random movement once you hide the mechanism itself. This illustrates the following quotation: "Don't tell me 'There's no right explanation.' There is a right explanation. We just don't know what it is." (Christopher Bassford)

Here's a very nice (and heavy) working double pendulum from Executive Model Design.

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Click the image above to go to a video of a live demonstration of a dual double pendulum. The double pendulum itself is an extremely simple system (there are only two points of freedom) that demonstrates deterministic chaos. The dual version (in which two double pendulums are suspended on the same axle) hows how dramatically the system's behavior can differ based on tiny differences in input (i.e., its sensitivity to initial conditions). (direct link).

Here is a link to an interactive Java applet on the double pendulum from the Virtual Physics Laboratory at Northwestern University.

Randomly Oscillating Magnetic Pendulum

(The image used in the Clausewitzian Trinity discussed in On War.)

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Clausewitzian "Trinity" demonstration device The "Trinity" is a key concept in Clausewitzian theory, which Clausewitz illustrated by referring to this scientific device. You can obtain the ROMP (Randomly Oscillating Magnetic Pendulum) from science toy stores for about $30. This model is available from Amazon.com (USA).

Logistic Map/Bifurcation Diagram

This FLASH animation is from "Flash Animations for Physics," by David M. Harrison, Department of Physics, University of Toronto. Click the image above to open it (in another window).

The Game of Life

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Invented in 1970 by John Horton Conway, Professor of Finite Mathematics at Princeton University. [This is discussed in Waldrop, Complexity--check the index for references. See also Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and The Meanings of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition, 1996), pp.166-176.] This simple mathematical exercise led investigators to a great many other ideas, but it also led directly to the entire field of "Artificial Life."

The Game of Life provides examples of "emergent complexity" and "self-organizing systems." It has a simple rule-set: "For each cell in the grid, count how many of its eight neighbors are ON at the present instant. If the answer is exactly two, the cell stays in its present state (ON or OFF) in the next instant. If the answer is precisely three, the cell is ON in the next instant whatever its current state. Under all other conditions, the cell is OFF." These basic rules were surprisingly hard to discover and seem to be unalterable or inevitable--that is, any other rules produce very uninteresting results: the system rapidly either freezes up solid or evaporates into nothingness. (Evidently, back in 1970 this game was more addictive to scientists than "Pong" was.)

Given this very simple rule (the only rule in the model universe we have created), the game demonstrates a surprising amount of complexity, depending on initial conditions. Click on these two screenshots from a computer-driven version of the game to see the very different system behaviors driven purely by the initial configuration of ON cells—um... What do we call that effect?)

Play the game yourself. Various Game of Life applications can be downloaded free from http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/. You'll have to install it on your own computer, of course.

See also http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html.

A Complex Adaptive System (CAS)

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Although it may look like a street in India, this is actually the Westphalian state system.

Another complex adaptive system at work?

*If you can't see a Flash application here, Thank you, Apple jerks. It's pretty old tech and often clunky: try right-click/Show All. If that doesn't work, click this link. That one seems to work OK. This shows Great Britain's Royal Navy destroying the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805).

Eric Berlow: "How Complexity Leads to Simplicity"

TED Global, 2010. Filmed July 2010. Posted on TED November 2010.

Original Url

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Click the image below for a larger, reasonably high-resolution version of the Afghanistan graphic to which speaker Eric Berlow refers.

LONGER VIDEOS

(on Complexity broadly speaking, including the narrower field of Chaos)

James Gleick discussing his famous book Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1987). Get the 20th anniversary edition (New York: Penguin, 2008), ISBN 9780143113454.

NOVA: "Hunting the Hidden Dimension."This is a one-hour video on fractals, divided into five chapters. This documentary highlights a host of filmmakers, fashion designers, physicians, and other researchers who are using fractal geometry to innovate and inspire. Also lots of textual material. Original PBS Broadcast Date: October 28, 2008. Also available on DVD from Amazon.com.

The Secret Life of Chaos (BBC 2010). Full Length Documentary. This video appears never to have been published by the BBC on DVD, but can be seen via the link above. You can find a great deal of video and information on it at http://atheistmovies.blogspot.com/2010/01/bbc-secret-life-of-chaos.html. There is a low-bandwidth version of the video here.

CHAOS: A MATHEMATICAL ADVENTURE

This is a film about dynamical systems, the butterfly effect and chaos theory, intended for a wide audience. From Jos Leys, Étienne Ghys and Aurélien Alvarez, comes CHAOS, a math movie with nine 13-minute chapters. Available in a large choice of languages and subtitles. https://www.chaos-math.org/en/film.html. Great graphics and animations; the pace is oddly slow.

CHAOS I: Motion and Determinism

—Panta Rhei CHAOS II: Vector Fields

—The Lego Race CHAOS III: Some Mechanics

—The Apple and the Moon

CHAOS IV: Oscillations

—The Swing CHAOS V: Billiards

—Duhem's Bull CHAOS VI: Chaos and the Horseshoe

—Smale in Copacabana

CHAOS VII: Strange Attractors

—The Butterfly Effect CHAOS VIII: Statistics

—Lorenz's Mill CHAOS IX: Chaotic or Not?

—Research Today

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