Werndl, Charlotte (2009) What are the new implications of chaos for unpredictability? British journal for the philosophy of science, 60 (1). pp. 195-220. ISSN 0007-0882
Abstract
From the beginning of chaos research until today, the unpredictability of chaos has been a central theme. It is widely believed and claimed by philosophers, mathematicians and physicists alike that chaos has a new implication for unpredictability, meaning that chaotic systems are unpredictable in a way that other deterministic systems are not. Hence, one might expect that the question ‘What are the new implications of chaos for unpredictability?’ has already been answered in a satisfactory way. However, this is not the case. I will critically evaluate the existing answers and argue that they do not fit the bill. Then I will approach this question by showing that chaos can be defined via mixing, which has never before been explicitly argued for. Based on this insight, I will propose that the sought-after new implication of chaos for unpredictability is the following: for predicting any event, all sufficiently past events are approximately probabilistically irrelevant.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2009 The Author |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | Q Science > Q Science (General) |
| Sets: | Departments > Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method |
| Rights: | http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/rights/LSERO.htm |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/31098/ |
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
