Abstract

The classical determinism is the view for which the only barrier to prediction is our lack of knowledge, due to a lack of observational data or to the lack of knowledge of the relevant laws of nature. A new mathematical theory, called CHAOS, offers a way of understanding order, order masquerading as randomness. My purpose here is an epistemological investigation: to examine a new area of scientific and philosophic inquiry, called ‘deterministic chaos’; to analyse the determinism in relation to unpredictability and to investigate a ‘modern’ source of deterministic chaos, the sensitive dependence on initial conditions ; to explore how, from microscale to macroscale, errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of unpredictable features