"For a good many centuries, human thought about nature has swung between two opposing points of view. According to one view, the universe obeys fixed, immutable laws, and everything exists in a well-defined objective reality. The opposing view is that there is no such thing as objective reality; that all is flux, all is change... The rise of science has largely been governed by the first viewpoint. But there are increasing signs that the prevailing cultural background is starting to switch to the second - ways of thinking as diverse as postmodernism, cyberpunk, and chaos theory all blur the alleged objectiveness of reality and open the ageless debate about rigid laws and flexible change.
What we really need to do is get out of this futile game altogether. We need to find a way to step back from these opposing worldviews - not so much to seek a synthesis as to see them both as two shadows of some higher order of reality - shadows that are different only because the higher order is being seen from two different directions. But does such a higher order exist, and if so, is it accessible?"
Ian Stewart, Nature's Numbers
reprinted without permission
"Even today, some seventy years after it (the "new" science) was fully formulated and long since it was joined by the further "bizarre" sciences of chaos and complexity, many scientists have trouble coming to terms with the central concepts of the new physics - its indeterminism, nonlinearity, and acausality; its fractals and wave/particle duality; and its cats that are alive and dead at the same time."
Marshall/Zohar/Peat, Who's Afraid of Schrödinger's Cat?
reprinted without permission
