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From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Fractals & Chaos
Message-ID: <1968@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 19:30:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1968
Posted: Mon Oct  7 19:30:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 06:33:19 EDT
References: <12113@rochester.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 17

This is the field of "dynamical systems", which has recently
undergone a large amount of active development by a number
of mathematicians.  There is indeed a close relationship
among "chaos", fractals, iteration theory, and dynamical
systems.  I am not sure that the theory helps much in
predicting viscosity of turbulent flow, etc. but it might.
There is a series of good books with lots of nice diagrams
targeted at about the undergraduate level; I left mine at
home but I think Abraham was one of the authors.  Someone
else will probably post the accurate title, author, etc.
but if they don't I'll try to do it later.

Back when I was working in solid-state theory, iterative
"renormalization group" approaches were leading to some
interesting discoveries about critical-point phenomena.
I don't know whether the theory of dynamical systems has
supplanted this line of inquiry or not.