ewtonian physics. In the last years of the 19th century French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Henri Poincare stumbled headlong into chaos with a realization that thereductionism method may be illusory in nature. He was studying his chosen field at the time; a field he called the mathematics of closed systems the epitome ofNewtonian physics. A Closed system is one made up of just a few interacting bodies sealed off from outside contamination. According to classical physics, such systems are perfectlyorderly and predictable. A simple pendulum in a vacuum, free of friction and air resistance will conserve its energy. The pendulum will swing back and forth for alleternity. It will not be subject to the dissipation of entropy, which eats its way into systems by causing them to give up their energy to the surrounding environment. Classical scientists were convinced that any randomness and chaos disturbing a system such as a pendulum in a vacuum or the revolving planets could only comefrom outside chance contingencies. Barring those, pendulum and planets must continue forever, unvarying in their courses.2 It was this comfortable picture of nature that Poincare blew apart when he attempted to determine The stability of our solar system For a system containing only two bodies, such as the sun and earth or earth and moon, Newtons equations can be solved exactly: The orbit of the moon around theearth can be precisely determined. For any idealized two-body system the orbits are stable. Thus if we neglect the dragging effects of the tides on the moonsmotion, we can assume that the moon will continue to wind around the earth until the end of time. But we also have to ignore the effect of the sun and other planetson this idealized two-body system.3 Poincares problem was that when an additional body was added to the situation, like the influence of the sun, Newtons equations became unsolvable. What mustbe done in this situation is ...
