Sabri,
The fad phase of cybernetics was the 1950s
and 1960s. Today it lives in modern complexity stuff.
The fad phase of catastrophe theory was the 1970s.
Today it is dead, except when appearing under
other names, which it is increasingly doing so again.
The fad phase for chaos theory was the 1980s, at
the end of which was when the Wiggins book appeared.
Today, chaos theory is just normal science. The fad
phase for complexity was the 1990s, and it is now
essentially normal science also, broken down into
all its constituent parts, which are very much alive.
Somebody commented that an important aspect
of this involves journalists hyping things with schlocky
books that sell a lot and make money. For chaos
theory the biggie was by James Gleick, 1987.
For complexity it was Waldrop in 1992. These also
bring out the overhyping debunkers, with Horgan's
End of Science, 1996, being the model. The first
batch overhype and the second batch overdehype.
One sign of all this is to look at the mathematicians,
who, although also subject to a certain amount of faddism,
tended to be much less affected by all this and, especially
the Russian ones, maintained more reasoned views on
these things. Thus they never hyped catastrophe theory
all that much, seeing it as a perfectly respectable and
useful sub-branch of bifurcation theory. Therefore, they
never felt the need to purge it and ignore it, as did the
lesser breeds like the economists, who are so busy
trying to show what hot-ass mathoids they are, even
worse than their physics envy, that they must huff and
puff to keep up (and down) with these various manifestations
of "fictitious intellectual capital." The most level-headed
book on catastrophe theory is by Vladimir Arnol'd,
a Russian, Catastrophe Theory, 3rd edn., 1992,
Springer-Verlag.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:27 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Complexity
> Les:
>
> > i agree chaos and complexity studies have a
> > fad __component__.
>
> Les,
>
> As I know it, fad means craze, trend, mania and the like. In that
> sense, anyone who knows some math knows that chaos is a fad. Take
> a look at the Preface of that beautiful book by Stephen Wiggins
> where he says:
>
> "Finally, although nonlinear dynamics and chaos have become
> something of a fad over a decade it is still true that an
> understanding of nonlinear phenomena requires a solid
> mathematical background and a lot of hard work."
>
> Topology was like that too at some point, although it never got
> the publicity chaos did, but this does not mean that topology is
> useless or irrelevant. Nor chaos as a theory is useless or
> irrelevant. Of course, it is useful and relevant. Even game
> theory can be useful, dispite my doubts. But none of these have
> anything to do with their "fadness", whatever that means. When
> you are an insider, you view things differently.
>
> > your friend is missing something.
>
> I doubt it. People like him don't miss much in such regards. By
> the way, at some point in his mathematics career he said, I am
> not gonna finish this PhD and started to read about the history
> of art. About the same time I started reading about the history
> of Jazz, so this is why I remember it.
>
> > what does he think of Goedel's work??? to my mind his
> > theorem highlights BOTH the strengths and weaknesses of
> > axiomatic systems, as he utiliized ingenious techniques
> > to derive said theroems.
>
> I better put you in touch with him so that he can answer your
> question personally. He was the first person from whom I heard
> about Goedel and at the time he was 18 and I was 17.
>
> Best,
>
> Sabri
>
> PS: Is Marsden you mentioned is Jerry Marsden?
>
