F. David Peat (1938–2017)

Here again we meet a physicist who wants to fulfil his need of transcendence by using the scientific method only. Most of his life was spent trying to answer philosophical questions by the scientific method. For him, all the answers had to come from 'science'. He was at the forefront of science in his time; trusting his own judgment which took him so far, he had little reasons or incentive to consult someone with very different basic approach to important philosophical questions.
His method, being flawed from the start, he could not satisfy his desire for transcendence, nor could he explain his intuition(or tacit belief) of 'unity' and of 'infinity'.
A very telling passage was an eulogy he wrote for one of his friend, an eulogy that was also read at his own funeral. The eulogy is quoted in full on page 322, at the end of the book.
He says in effect that the finite, being contingent, has to be grounded in the infinite. That the quality of the infinite is convey in the word 'spirit' (wind or breath). This energy (which he would have like to discover with the scientific method, as for him there is no other way to knowledge) infuses all living beings, and without it any organism fall apart.
What is truly alive in the living being is this energy of spirit, and this is never born and never dies.
So that the god he put his faith in was an incomprehensible (so far) energy that always was and ever will be.
Trying to pull himself up by his own boot straps, he naturally could never get off the ground. He did not.… (more)

My reactions upon reading this book in 1990.

As befits the authors' dualistic structure for the book and their constant emphasis on the shifts between chaos and order, I found this book alternately exhilarating and annoying.

I found parts quite interesting: the explanation here of fractals helped me understand better their place as intermediaries between two dimensions, solitons (traveling waves of energy that, when conditions are right, travel amazing distances without dissipation), a smattering of info on the way the nervous system is thought to work and how personality and thought may be underpinned biologically by chaos type systems, the problem of three-body orbits, and an interesting theory on how chaotic processs can reconcile classical physics and quantum mechanics, and the ultimate universal apocalypse implied in the theoretical idea of a "vacuum bubble instanton" -- the universe boiling away.

The annoyance comes in several forms. First, in trying to be simple and nonmathematical, the authors obscure some issues. However, my main objections to parts of this book are philosophical. While certain types of social "sciences" (notably economics) have contributed to the development of chaos science, I dislike Briggs and Peat using chaos as what I call a "grand unified theory", a metaphor and paradigm through which to see and explain natural and social phenomena. Their view seems justified for physics, biology, etc. but I'm less sure -- far less sure -- it's justified in using it to study history, social organizations and the makeup of human. However, Briggs and Peat seem to want to run everything through their grand unified theory. Whereas other disciplines talk about conditioning (psychology), influences (history, literature), relationships, etc., Briggs and Peat seem to want to label almost all interactive relationships with the chaos term of feedback. Thus we talk of the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution as feedback and speculate whether or not evolution is a chaotic process -- with the interesting note that chaotic behavior seems to slant chemical behavior toward amino acids and such more than mere chance would or the development of organizations. This all may be valid, but it also smacks of metaphor and paradigm run amok.

My biggest objection to this book is that Briggs and Peat seem to be examples of that strange type of scientist who are, in some sense, mystical and anti-sicence, anti-rational, anti-technology. There are constant allusions to Chinese myths including the title. This may, of itself, be fine as example and metaphor of chaotic behavior, but, taken with other things, this is evidence of that pro-Eastern religion, anti-West stance that crops up in some younger scientists. They speak about chaos' holistic aspect, how it cuts across disciplines. They are quite right to do so. Chaos, as James Gleick pointed out in a book of the same title, may save science from the perils of specialization. Specialization was a necessary outcropping probably of the quest for scientific truth, but Briggs and Peat pay homage, especially in the book's last chapter, to the holistic idea as opposition to "reductionism"; it is a Buddha-like reverence for nature's One. But it also seems to be an attack on traditional science and technology, on the attempt to understand, and especially to control, the parts of nature. Briggs and Peat seem to think that reductionism is not only intellectually incomplete but that its fruits are bad, almost morally tainted they imply. They ridicule reductionist science's attempts to control nature and correct past mistakes. Specifically, they ridicule an alleged proposal to reverse ozone depletion by putting frozen ozone in space. It probably is unworkable scheme, but Briggs and Peat's objetions are philosophical, not rational and technical.

The authors see chaos as showing us we cannot know everything, we have limitations. Chaos does show us not everything is predictable, but I contend it will advance our abilities, we will know more precisely what we can and can't do even better than now. Chaos will help us predict where we can't now and better know when we can't predict.

To the authors it sees a new Gothic philosophy where there are not only some things "man was not meant to know" but also things man was not meant to do or even think about. Jeremy Rivkin is favorably quoted. In the quote, Rivkin objects to the very words of science "the words of authorship, the words of a creator, an architect, a designer." It is a fatal blow to Briggs' and Peat's philosophical credibility. Any scientist quoting Rivkin in support of their ideas is not thinking. Further references to this quasi-religous prostration before nature, its inherent wonder and unknowability, before the Goddess of Ignorance and an almost literal interpretation of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.… (more)