perscribed title #8

"People need to believe that order can be glimpsed in the chaos of events" (adapted from John Gray, Heresies, 2004). In what ways and to what extent would you say this claim is relevant in at least two areas of knowledge?

We, as humans, are generally pattern makers. We feel the need to apply order to all things that we cannot explain. We seem to believe that we can bring order to things that are not orderly and understand matters that do not seem to be comprehendible. This belief of adding order to all things blends over into the ways of knowing and influences their course of knowledge. This is most prominent in the Natural sciences, and in History. In these two areas, we create meaning behind events and attempt to give a cause for the effect of the event.
Physics is a natural science that attempts to add order to events that seem out of place and random. This can be seen it the way physicists create equations for events that do not seem important to us as humans, or things that we cannot even see. Quantum mechanics, the dealing with subatomic particles, is something that physicists have tried to apply order to. In the way that it is described, particles at the subatomic level are unpredictable and can be in two places at once, making any kind of prediction impossible. These physicists that found this subatomic plane however created equations of probability to attempt to apply human order to it and to predict the appearance of these particles at a certain time. These physicists use induction to apply a general law to this theory of quantum mechanics, even though this plane of existence cannot be seen buy any kind of device. Through this, they have managed to show through equations and experiments that what equations they have written are valid in this field of study.
This is just one of many examples that famous physicists have done, but I have done this on a smaller scale in my high school physics class. Every few weeks we perform an experiment to determine some sort of general rule to a problem or to determine why there is energy lost in a certain machine process. We once were given a small engine to experiment with. We knew that energy was being lost due to friction, but we did not know how much energy. It was our goal to figure the amount lost because it was not know to this type of engine.
The other natural science that tries to apply order is chemistry. When I took chemistry, we learned that chemists discovered a way of combining elements. These men figured out that in order to combine and separate molecules, there needed to be the same number of different atoms on either side of an equation, where one side is equal to another. Even though this did not prove useful at an earlier time, the fact remains that when these chemists did not understand how some elements bonded with others and, in this confusion, they created a rule that explained the reason for these elements changing.
Even though we like to apply order to science and scientific phenomena, there are problems with wanting to apply order to this area of knowledge. One of the key characteristics of science is that it is always changing. Because it is always changing, there is no definite equation or theory, which means that these theories and equations can be disproved in the near future, proving that the efforts of some men and women were completely wrong. These happen when we discover new facts about that field that conflict with the given knowledge. For example, in physics we learned that light was accepted as a wave, but through experiments we determined that light also behaved as a particle. This paradox has caused many shifts in the theory of light and is still split to this day.
I have had this same problem when working in my science classes through out high school, to a lesser extent. For example, we were asked to write a general formula for an application in physics regarding the motion of a spring. I had written a formula that worked for predicting the position of the mass oscillating on the spring. It worked when I tested it. However, the next step involved adding another factor and having the equation still produce the same graph. When I added this new factor, my equation was off and I had to rewrite the entire equation over with different values for everything.
Another area of knowledge that we order can be seen in its chaos is mathematics. Math is close to physics in that it is used to develop patterns and laws with numbers which are tested. Some examples of these are the Pythagorean Theorem, and the Einstein’s theory of relativity. The way that these theorems came around is by the need to give order. The Pythagorean Theorem was conceived by Pythagoras who discovered that when the two smaller sides of a triangle are squared, they will equal the square of the hypotenuse. This would give an n accurate way of building instead of just improvising while you go.
During the writing of my math internal assessment, we were asked to find a general statement to solve for a logarithmic pattern. Even though I had solved the general statement, it was expected to only work for whole values. However, I thought that it would be unusual if the pattern only applied to whole numbers. So I tested it with different values giving uneven numbers and the general rule still applied.
Even though we apply order to all things around us, we generally do not know if it is organizing the chaos there is. We still have problems and are constantly trying to solve them, with no luck.
In chaos, we apply order because we believe that order can be applied. This is the main reason why we keep trying. Through the natural sciences we have found was of solving energy problems as well as applying rules to things that seem random and chaotic. We do this because we are pattern makers and we see things as needing to be organized and set straight. However, being a maker of patterns and applying order, we do have the habit of applying things that could lead to more chaos instead of creating order. even though we can screw up by applying faulty order to chaos, we still believe that order can be applied to everything.