From chaos to conflict

This paper examines deterministic unpredictability from the point of view of the interdisciplinary study of time. The first part reports about the existence of regions of unpredictable numerical solutions to certain deterministic functions, revealed by recent work on the behavior of nonlinear systems. The second part locates deterministic unpredictability in the developmental history of time and causation. The third part traces the origins of predictability to the emergence of primitive forms of permanence from the primeval chaos of pure change. This perspective permits a reconceptualization of creativity in nature and man as a capacity to generate and maintain conflicts between ordering and disordering processes. Inorganic and organic evolution, no less than mental and cultural development may then be viewed as the complexification of conflicts between increasingly more intricate forms of permanence and the ever-present chaos of pure change. The paper concludes by noting that the creation and maintenance of conflicts between ordering and disordering processes, which has only lately achieved formal representation in exact science, has been the time-honored task of the arts and letters.