by Robert Millard, Edge International

Today, we know the world in which we live is anything but ordered. Chaos is the norm and not the brief transition between equilibriums. Life is a spiderweb of inextricably intertwined interrelationships. The complexity makes accurate forecasting of the future impossible. Entirely new fields of science such as quantum mechanics, chaos theory and evolutionary biology have emerged to explain these new insights. Today's view of the cosmos, from the galactic to the sub-atomic, is of a hierarchy of interrelated complex adaptive systems, each with its own dynamics.

These complex adaptive systems are far, far too complex to think about in the linear ways that we are so used to. Basic assumptions like cause and effect no longer apply in anything like the same way. This is not to say that there are no rules, or that everything is random. If one mixes two chemicals in fixed proportions, under the same conditions, then the same reaction will still materialize time after time. If one places a lion and an antelope in a small enclosure, it is still likely that one of them will become lunch and it is safe to predict that it will not be the lion!

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