The success of modern physics has consisted primarily in the analysis of physical reality into its fundamental components. But popular reports that physicists are close to arriving at a "theory of everything" are misleading: such a theory would still be limited to interpreting fundamental interactions and explaining why subatomic particles have the scientist could compute the behavior of all those particles for any significant time into the future.
The problem of prediction in complicated systems is especially intractable when the system in question is chaotic. The essential characteristic of chaotic systems is that they are "nonlinear." In linear systems, similar causes lead to similar effects, whereas in nonlinear systems the outcome of the process is so sensitive to initial conditions previously produced a linear result—the faucet is just opened wider—but the result is suddenly very different.
Between the extremes of simple predictability and chaos there can arise behavior that is partly linear and partly chaotic. The emerging science of complexity theory offers promise of explaining the behavior of systems that are on the edge of chaos, in the sense that they retain a degree of order while flirting and behaviors that enable it to cope with changing environmental conditions, and, thus, adapt and evolve.
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