On the Impact of Deterministic Chaos on Modern Science and Philosophy of Science: Implications for the Philosophy of Technology?

The modern concept of deterministic chaos arises from the mathematical and physical investigation of the topological and dynamical properties of deterministic systems. The notion of deterministic chaos is frequently used in an increasing number of scientific as well as non-scientific contexts, ranging from mathematics and the physics of dynamical systems to all sorts of complicated time evolutions, e.g., in chemistry, biology, physiology, economics, sociology, and even psychology. In this, the central epistemological impact of chaos research is on matters of prediction and computability of most nonlinear deterministic systems, while the various concepts of deterministic chaos in use do not constitute a new science, or a revolutionary change of the scientific world picture. Instead, chaos research provides a sort of toolbox of topological, perturbational, and numerical methods which are certainly useful for a more detailed analysis and understanding of such dynamical systems whose deterministic trajectories are, roughly speaking, endowed with the property of exponential sensitivity on initial conditions. Such a property, then, implies merely one, but a quantitatively strong type of effective or empirical limitation on long-time computability and predictability, respectively. Several reasons are given for why the impact of deterministic chaos research on quantitative modelling in the analysis of social and technological processes seems to be rather limited.