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A Response to John D. Eigenauer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David Steenburg
David Steenburg
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Extract

John D. Eigenauer's article elucidates chaos theory and its implications well. Four problems, however, lead to a basic misunderstanding of my original article. First, he tends to construe my use of “random” in its strongest sense. Second, he does so because he sees my discussion as simply extending a nebulous and metaphoric integration of chaos and order to a variety of dialectical opposites. Third, this interpretation misses the crux of my argument for the reconciliation of reductionism and humanism. Finally, he interprets my theological conclusion as an argument for creation that “commands” worship.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 471 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1993

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References

1 Gleick, James, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987) 252Google Scholar.

2 One can visualize this difference of emphasis using the Mandelbrot set. If one draws a horizontal line from right to left through the center of the Mandelbrot “gingerbread man,” one proceeds through the big circle to the progressively smaller ones until the figure dissolves into chaos; the ratio of each smaller circle to the preceding larger one is describable in terms of a constant, the Feigenbaum number. Eigenauer is drawn primarily to this aspect of chaos theory. I am drawn rather to the boundary where the intricate lattices of lightning and seahorses appear.

3 Ibid., 232–36; the plate is between pp. 114 and 115.

4 Investigating the matter further shows that the complexity of the boundary is apparent between 1.7490 and 1.7500, since many initial values within this range are intermittently chaotic and periodic.

5 Prigogine, Ilya, Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984) 173-74Google Scholar. It is also implicit in Gleick's characterization (Chaos, 5) of chaos scientists: “They feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quark, chromosomes, or neurons. They believe that they are looking for the whole.”

6 Prigogine, Order, 174.

7 Gleick, Chaos, 233.

8 Rosen, Robert, “The Physics of Complexity,” in Trappl, Robert, ed., Power, Autonomy, Utopia: New Approaches toward Complex Systems (New York: Plenum, 1986) 35–42Google Scholar. See Steenburg, David, “Chaos at the Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” HTR 84 (1991) 457Google Scholar n. 22.

9 Davies, Paul, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (New York: Touchstone, 1992) 231-32Google Scholar.