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Date: 1991
Question:
Is there a correlation between Chaos theory and human existence?


Replies:
Yup, definitely. Without humans, chaos theory would never have been invented... To try to guess what you really meant though... Chaos is definitely at work in the evolutionary system that seems to have produced us here on earth (unless you buy those aliens from space or similar ideas...) The old "survival of the fittest" idea kind of implicitly ruled out chance, but it is clear that chance plays a very important role - for example in the changes in the environment that lead to annihilation of specialists in favor of generalists, or stability that favors the specialists again. But does this "chaos" have anything to do with chaos theory? Not much I think. Maybe biologists know more about it. Perhaps links will show up in more quantitative models of evolution, but I do not think such things exist yet. Anyway, maybe what you really meant was something different?

Arthur Smith


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