English

DTIC ADA432927: Chaos, Complexity and Deterrence

Chaos theory in the West (considerable work on chaos was also conducted in the Soviet Union) developed from the 1960s work of meteorologist Edward Lorenz. Lorenz developed a simple meteorological model based on differential equations. When he ran his model on a computer, Lorenz discovered that a very small difference (less than one part in one thousand) in the initial conditions led to large changes in the weather predicted by his model over time. This discovery, sensitivity to initial conditions, is one of the fundamental characteristics of chaos theory. Lorenz went on to explore some of the implications of his discovery and published a seminal paper, Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow, in 1963. Over the past few decades, chaos theory has been used widely in the natural sciences. More recently, it has also begun to be applied to the social sciences as well. However, as sometimes happens with trendy concepts from the natural sciences (James Gleick's excellent 1987 popular work, Chaos, did much to popularize the concept), chaos theory, often poorly understood, has been stretched and mangled in order to force fit it to social phenomena where its use is inappropriate. Nevertheless, despit

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