A must watch: a high quality BBC documentary on the great paradigm shift that happened through the second half of the 20th century from the Newtonian paradigm of a clockwork universe, not to Relativity or Quantum Uncertainty, but straight into Chaos.
It lasts exactly 1 hour.
Found at In Defense of Marxism, which has an article on it, with a few punctual criticisms and some of its politico-economical implications.
I understand that the film has an spiritual (emotional) and intellectual value and is worth watching even for those in the know, so to say, of Chaos science. Because it is not so easy to comprehend this new unavoidable paradigm and the film certainly aids to that in many ways. Understanding Chaos may be even more important than understanding Relativity, because Einstein's theory only applies to some aspects of reality, while Chaos applies to everything.
It is this overwhelming influence of Chaos mathematics and physics what makes this understanding so crucial, whichever one's field or fields of interest: it applies to evolution and human prehistory surely and it also is in the economy, in social organization and even in the intimacy of our souls (psyche).
Self organization, feedback, fractality (the part and the whole are usually similar), unpredictability of even very simple systems, orders as forms of chaos and not anymore its opponents and critically the real option for a small incident to precipitate a major reaction if the conditions are adequate albeit unpredictably so (the butterfly effect).
We have no choice but to embrace Chaos if we are to do something in it.
Thanks for the link. I didn´t know this terrific documentary was on Youtube. Now I can use it when I try to explain it to my friends.
ReplyDeleteYes, you are right, it's a must watch and I hope that this new paradigm changes the way people think on science, social relations and politics. It's about time we finish with the "absolute truths" that define and shape our world.
I discovered your blog a couple of weeks ago after your comments at Atilio`s. Very interesting and I`m really enjoying reading it.
Thanks again and, by de way, congratulations for Bildu. The ball is on your side now.
Thanks for the compliments, Javier.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that the ball is now in Madrid, specifically on Rajoy's table (as he's poised to be the new Spanish PM soon).
But, well, on the other side, it is clear that we cannot count on whatever Madrid does and we may have to take our own steps unilaterally. Not easy with the PNV so "shy" to execute what they supposedly call for: self-rule.