Is Anything Ever New? Discovering the Hidden Order in Chaos
July 3, 1996, 7:30 p.m.
Exploratorium's McBean Theater
Dr. James Crutchfield is a research professor at the Santa Fe
Institute and a research physicist at the University of California at Berkeley.
During his Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium, Dr. Crutchfield has been
instrumental in helping conceive and create
Turbulent Landscapes: The Natural Forces that Shape Our World.
In his lecture, Dr. Crutchfield will describe how nature's complexity
arises from the interplay of order and chaos and will also explain science's
role in discovering nature's laws. Over the last several decades, science's
view of nature's lack of structure--its unpredictability--has undergone
a major renovation with the discovery of "deterministic chaos."
Behind the veil of apparent randomness, many processes are highly ordered,
following simple rules. As the millennium comes to a close, tools adapted
from nonlinear physics and the theory of computation will bring empirical
science to the brink of automatically discovering the hidden patterns and
quantifying their complexity.
Hydrodynamic Workshops
MARIE LANSAC
Workshops developed by French public artist Marie Lansac will
be offered throughout July and August. Visitors will create their own images
of self-organization by pulling sheets of paper through water covered by
a floating layer of pigment. The results are intriguing ink drawings that
capture the effects of fluid and water dynamics - forms that suggest
rivers, meandering streams, and even tree branches - creating images
representative of patterns in nature. Exploratorium Explainers will lead
the workshops. Participants are invited to take their artwork home. Time
and location will be posted here soon and at the museum as well.
