Teoría del caos y método científico

Abstract

A bibliographical review on the epistemological relationship between science and chaos is presented. In the past, mechanicism had postulated an orderly and continuous universe formed by separated parts (reductionism) which responded to a cause (causality) and might generate predictable effects (predictability). The conception of complex systems, many of them disordered, aperiodical, and energy dissipators, appeared in the last decades. The parts of these systems are not conceived without the whole (holism); this concept generated a change in the philosophy of science and justified its understanding through the chaos theory. Chaotic systems are very sensitive to the initial conditions (determinism) and are unpredictables to a long term. A brief history on this new scientific investigation methodology is narrated. The chaos components, such as fractals, attractors, noises, phase-spaces, and dimensions, are described. Mathematics of the chaos was born due to computer science's development. This mathematics, together with diffuse logic, allowed to build experimental models (simulators) by means of which new knowledge and predictions in the fields of physiology, pathology, biology, physics, meteorology, economy and others, were obtained. In physiology, phenomena concerning the biorhythm of the nervous system, heart automatism, circulatory dynamics, internal environment homeostasis, lung adaptability, circadian rhythm, hormonal retroactions, enzymatic activities, immunologic efficiency, olfactory perception, cognition, behavior and adaptive changes, were elucidated. Chaos theory has motivated a paradigm change and it has become a method to generate scientific knowledge in the area of unstable complex systems.