Week 7 Physics: ordered chaos, fractals & consciousness out of chaos

From this weeks reading, I am most impressed by the history of the Lorenz attractor. To recap: Edward Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, presented a paper titled, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterly's wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?". His paper was about how the initial conditions of an event are highly sensitive and yield a significant impact on the end results - for this reason, the weather forecast is unpredictable after a few days (we would have to have the most minutely perfect data of too many things from too many places to ensure this).
Years later he wrote his paper, "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow" in which three differential equations result , "in a complicated non-linear, 3-D and deterministic solution." The result:

The Lorenz Attractor. It looks an awful lot like a butterfly (and a tornado!). Clearly there is elegance to this theory, order in the theory of chaos!

And other scientific theories also involve Lorenz attractors.

Consciousness, like chaos theory, is an open, dynamic system - we are not pre-programmed to think and learn, yet we do refer and are aware of the whole so that while we can adapt we can also reproduce and maintain life. Perhaps this is why depressive states are not never-ending (though they do beget more depressive thoughts, a "downward spiral"). Inevitably, the consciousness of the whole brings us back, we wipe our tears, Yin transforms into Yang as Yin is not absolute - neither is depression. Like weather, we cannot predict how we will feel, what our consciousness will be three days from now - there are too many variables. Looking at the Lorenz attractor, I can see that ultimately there is a balance. I also wonder if deep in Edward Lorenz' consciousness he was aware of the 'shape of things' - that, although weather prediction is "a fantasy", that there is deep order, and apparently balance, in the, middle of chaos and his theory.

Fractals

 

Fractals are indeed trippy, but actually, it's one very compelling reason why I trust Chinese Medicine so much - because we see the same patterns in nature as we see in ourselves. This is why we can compare our channels to rivers, an extraordinary meridian as a sea, and the acu points to natural structures and phenomenon, etc. Chinese Medicine also works in a self reflexive way - we see this in cun measurements of the body, which represents a fractal, too. That's why we can rely on the length of the forearm to measure certain points, or the length of the torso - these areas are little systems part of the larger system. The ear is a beautiful microcosm of the body in the fetal position, and this intimate position helps us in intimate ways such as addiction, stress, eating disorders, as per the NADA protocol which is used to great effect without having to be highly individualized (as full body acupuncture treatments must be). And as infants, we seem to be more the same too, not as indivualized as when we are adults.

From fractal.org:

"Most natural objects - and that includes us human beings - are composed of many different types of fractals woven into each other, each with parts which have different fractal dimensions.", and "We are fractal. Our lungs, our circulatory system, our brains are like trees. They are fractal structures."

Fractals are a point in physics where I see a lot of connection with TCM.