Since I respect the truth of science, I must at least mention the Chaos Theory, which has so shaken the complacency of classical science, and even of the modern sciences of the wave mechanics and the quantum mechanics. The wave mechanics and the quantum mechanics attempt to describe the highly unconventional behaviour of atomic and sub-atomic particles when viewed through the spectrum of common-sense – that is to say if these “things” are actually particles. In hindsight I suspect these new branches of modern physics will be seen as an attempt to shore up the structure of classical physics by showing that classical physics was but a particular example of a more general theory. Similarly with hindsight, I suspect that Chaos Theory will be seen as undermining completely many of the basic assumptions of classical physics, in particular that this is an ordered world in the traditional sense in which science has used that phrase; and that will be a refreshing change!
In folklore we are quite familiar with the ideas of Chaos Theory. There is the fable of the loss of a single nail from a horse’s hoof leading to the loss of an entire Kingdom. It may not often be that carelessness in the everyday world results in such dramatic consequences, but the saying “It never rains, but it pours” enshrines a similar idea that strokes of bad luck do not come singly, there is a pattern to it. And the military reputation of the Duke of Wellington for having an attention to detail that amounted almost to genius, underlines the experience that trivial acts of carelessness can have consequences far greater than one would ever have expected. Chaos Theory is based on the idea that in many situations, there is as sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which is saying the same thing in analytical language. This means both practically and theoretically that it is impossible to predict the weather more than a few days ahead. After the Second World War, it was assumed that with the introduction of computers, and the ability to handle vast amounts of information, weather forecasting would become far more accurate than it had ever been for Bomber Command. It was found that this was not so. Only gradually did it become clear that even minute changes in initial conditions, which most people would have said were too small to be relevant, produced enormously different weather patterns, within days. And all this, despite the fact that in the long-term there is still a rhythm in the way things happen. Nature is not a mad-house!
Edward Lorenz was the first person to discover, or stumble on, Chaos Theory; and at first he studied it in relation to weather systems and the convection of fluids, that is liquids and gasses. Mathematically he found with the convection of fluids, that three non-linear equations provided him with a model of a chaotic system, that never settled down to a rhythmical pattern.