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The complexity theory, in science, is a development from chaos theory and the law of nature. It states that if random happenings in Nature are left to themselves, they will settle not into the simplest possible pattern (as was once thought), but into complex patterns. In computer simulations of ants carrying eggs in a nest, for example, it has been discovered that left to themselves they will gradually arrange the eggs in concentric circles, largest on the outside and smallest on the inside. When this abstract model—which imported no outside ‘intelligence’ of any kind, merely charting an unprogrammed series of random movements—was tested by observing real ants, they did exactly the same. The theory has implications for the process of evolution and for cosmology—and it suggests, as Euclidean geometry, quantum mechanics and relativity did before it, that our concepts of the ‘laws of physics’ or the ‘laws of the universe’ still need refining. KMcL |
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