We are going to hear from Mrs. Milligan of the music department as she describes the influences these ideas have had in music. In the past, when we studied the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, or Islamic civilizations, we were able to show you a coherent view they believed about how the universe began, how it ran, and in some cases, how they believed it would end. In many civilizations these ideas were expressed in religion or philosophy. From Ptolemy through Copernicus and Newton, there were always firm answers to the questions of reality. Today, something has changed.
Man now lives in many ways in a period of relative uncertainty.
That is a difficult question to answer. As we have studied through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the modern reality is based on induction, which means observable phenomena put into generalized patterns. Chaos theory is based on the idea that seemingly random behavior may actually be caused by some simple underlying mechanisms. Understanding these mechanisms might allow for prediction of now unpredictable phenomena and, possibly, better control of them. They have also linked cosmic impacts to continental drift, geomagnetism, and the creation of volcanoes due to chaotic interactions between asteroids and Earth itself.