Chaos,Complexity,andEntropy（混乱,复杂性,andEntropy）.pdfVIP

Chaos, Complexity, and Entropy A physics talk for non-physicists Michel Baranger Center for Theoretical Physics, Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA and New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA MIT-CTP-3112 The twenty-first century is starting with a huge bang. For the person in the street, the bang is about a technica lrevolution that may eventua y dwarf the industria lrevolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, having already produced a drastic change in the rules of economics. For the scientifica y minded, one aspect of this bang is the complexity revolution, which is changing the focus of research in a scientific disciplines, for instance human biology and medicine. What role does physics, the oldest and simplest science, have to play in this? Being a theoretica lphysicist to the core, I want to focus on theoretica lphysics. Is it going to change also? Twentieth-century theoretical physics came out of the relativistic revolution and the quantum mechanical revolution. It was all about simplicity and continuity (in spite of quantum jumps). Its principal tool was calculus. Its final expression was field theory. Twenty-first-century theoretical physics is coming out of the chaos revolution. It will be about complexity and its principal tool will be the computer. Its final expression remains to be found. Thermodynamics, as a vital part of theoretical physics, will partake in the transformation. CHAOS For theoretica lphysicists the revolution started a few decades ago with chaos. Chaos is a purely mathematica lconcept; it is an undeniable mathematica lfact. We know that theoretica lphysics is built on mathematics, an