These terrorist attacks show that the perpetrators share none of the aims of Islam, such as spreading Islam peacefully. You cannot spread Islam to other people by bombing them. Is there anything in Islam which legitimizes this terrorist attack? Certainly not! Jihad is a totally different concept, and can be declared only when Islam has to be defended. But Islam does not have to be defended in America, for Islam is already acknowledged here as one of the three monotheist religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. This is not a superficial acknowledgment”6 million Muslims now live in America. Islam is not an imported religion, and this terrorist attack has nothing to do with American Muslims. On the contrary, it was perpetrated by outsiders having political”not religious”motivations.

The goals for which they are striving are not Islamic, but probably are related to the current political goals of certain people who manipulate Islam to legitimize their quest. I do not agree with Samuel Huntingtons well-known œclash of civilizations theory, in which Islam is approached as an enemy to the West and must be destroyed. On the other hand, the media (especially, those who supply the information and constantly oppose Islam) are striving to maintain an artificial adversarial sensitivity against Islam.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict underlies the clash of civilizations and, in a way, is the primary source of all these events. Mutual terror has been experienced throughout the 54 years of this conflict. Palestinians retaliated with counter-terror campaigns to Israel’s terror at the governmental level. This has affected millions of people not only in terms of religion but also in terms of national-political status. Israel attacks Palestinians not because they are Muslims but because they are Arab Palestinians. The fact that 20 percent of all Palestinians are Christians shows that this is not a religiously driven conflict. Nayef Hawatmeh and George Habash are leaders of Palestinian Democratic Public Front and are both Orthodox Christians. They began organizing suicidal attacks before HAMAS was even founded. The foremost significant supporters of Palestinians are Edward

Said and Albert Hourani, who are Protestant Christians and, respectively, prominent figures in literature and history.

The organizational formation of the terrorist group that launched the September 11th attacks deserves serious consideration. It seems that 60 to 70 people were actively involved; 19 of them are dead. But what about those who probably provided logistical support? How did they carry out their role unnoticed? For such an organization, there needs to be a mastermind, and I do not think that Bin Laden is the most likely candidate.

All types of terrorism, regardless of reason, are evil. While protesting terrorism, however, we should not ignore the reasons. America has to delve into the reasons and the roots of these events. It has to cast far-reaching look and search for real reasons, instead of dealing with symptoms. If America uses its power not to exercise sovereignty over others but to create a more peaceful world, this would serve its own interests. In addition, Muslims would benefit the most from it.

Even though garden cultivation of roses began some 5,000 years ago, possibly in China, the fossil record indicates that roses have existed for millions of years. Wherever roses are found, they become a symbol of something: love, beauty, royalty, death, war, and politics. Sometimes, they even represent famous names in history.

During the Roman Empire, roses were grown extensively in the Middle East. Those roses, the most fragrant in the world, were used to make perfume. Their strong scent also caused people to regard them as having a deep mystical significance. However, roses grown in China do not have such a scent. Perhaps this is one reason why roses are not nearly so beloved in China.

Roses seem to make their first literary appearance in the eighth century bce. In The Iliad, an epic poem of ancient Greece, Hectares body was anointed with rose oil. Roses are often mentioned in ancient Greek myths in a wide variety of different forms. For example, a white raised symbolized Aphrodites purity and innocence. Furthermore, her desire and passion for Adonis, her wounded love, was represented by a few drops of her blood changing a white rose into a red rose. In another myth, Zeus scattered roses across the land as a wedding gift to Eros and Psyche.

The Romans also embellished their myths with roses. They used roses at funerals as a sign of resurrection, for example, and Flora was the goddess of spring and flowers. Despite being credited with creating the rose, other Greek deities helped Flora give it its life, sweet scent, and beautiful shape.

Presumably, a correlation exists between ancient Greek and Roman mythology and Christianity with respect to roses. Harpcrates, who was bribed into secrecy with a white rose by Eros, became the god of silence. This was carried over into Christianity, for a rose was often carved onto a meeting rooms plastered ceilings to warn that the discussions were sub rosa (under the rose, or secret).

The rose and religion

Christians used the red rose as a symbol of Jesus passion, martyrdom, and resurrection, as well as for Marys motherhood and purity. Mary is mostly linked with the white rose. The roses design also implies the liturgy. For instance, Mary is surrounded with brilliant roses in this beautiful poem by Wordsworth (1807):

In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,
And, Mary! Oft beside our blazing fire,
When yeas of wedded life were as a day
Whose current answers to the hearts desire.(1)

Also, Mary is often reported as being accompanied by showers of fragrant rose petals. Many stained-glass window scenes of the Blessed Mother and other saints show them holding roses. Underlying all of this is the idea that fragrance is good.

In the seventh century, Prophet Muhammad is symbolized with a rose. It seems that every opening bloom points to another wonderful person in the garden of humanity. The roses reputation increased a thousandfold with the coming of the Prophet. His great personality illuminated the roses color, and his perfect morality is the source of its fragrant sense.

Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230), one of the greatest Sufi mystic poets of all time, wrote in his The Rose Garden:

In the rose bed, mystery glows.
The secret is hidden in the rose.(2)

Another Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), notes that just as the rose consists of many petals held together, so a Sufis soul shows many different qualities. These qualities emit fragrance in the form of a spiritual personality. As the rose has a beautiful structure, the Sufi has a fine structure, manner, dealing with others, speech, action, and so on. Just as the roses beautiful perfume penetrates the entire room, the Sufi penetrates society and helps to heal its problems.

Furthermore, the Quran honors the red rose by mentioning only it out of all flowers: When the sky is torn apart, so it was (like) a red rose like ointment. Then which of your Lords favors will you deny? (55:37-38). The beauty of a single rose is just one small creation among all of Gods bestowed bounties. The rose has a distinct shape, and whoever created it and tore the sky apart, just like we might tear apart a red rose, created it so that we could understand that the rose was created for significant reasons.

In the Islamic tradition, wearing perfume is a food for the soul and the spirit. One hadith relates that one of the Prophets favorite things was good fragrance. That is why Muslims often wear pure essence of rosewater, especially before prayers. Rosewater is also the preferred soak for the miswak (a traditional toothbrush taken from the branches of a fibrous tree).

Possessing one of the most heavenly scents, a roses essence has several aromatherapeutic benefits as well. Valerie Worwood, in her The Complete Book of Aromatherapy, writes that a roses essence is a powerful and uplifting anti-depressant, aids in digestion, and soothes frayed nerves. These benefits can be enjoyed just by sprinkling some rose water or essence on your body, adding a few drops to your bathwater, or burning the scent in an incense burner in your home.

Associating roses with religion is as old as religion itself. How nice it would be if the veneration that all Jews, Christians, and Muslims have for the rose could make all of us understand that we are bound together with each other and many others in this very way! Moreover, these three monotheistic religions trace their origins to the Middle East, the ancestral home of modern roses.

The rose in other cultures

Many other cultures feature things related to the rose. For example, different sects within Hinduism worship deities through such household and temple offerings as rose attar (perfume). Ancient Persian legends speak of a nightingale that so dearly loved the white rose that it grasped it tightly. The thorns, which pierced its breast and caused its blood to fall on the rose, turned it red. Hence, one type of rose is known as the red damask. Interestingly, Rose is one of the most popular names for girls in many languages. The Turkish word gul, for instance, means rose and smile and has many popular derivations in Turkey.

Around the twelfth or thirteenth century, knights returning from the Crusades brought the rose home to Europe. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the rose was used as a symbol for the factions fighting to control England. The white rose symbolized York, and the red rose symbolized Lancaster. As a result, the conflict became known by historians as the War of the Roses. The red rose is still the emblem of England, since Lancaster won the war. Roses were in such high demand during the seventeenth century that royalty considered roses or rose water as legal tender. Both were often used as barter and for payment. Napoleons wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses in western Paris during the 1800s.

A new interpretation

In the twentieth century, a splendid new interpretation of the rose and nightingale story was presented by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. His famous The Words contains an addendum to the discussion on the nightingale. The nightingales small wage is the delight it experiences from gazing on smiling, beautiful roses, and the pleasure it receives from conversing with them and pouring out its woes. In other words, its sorrowful song is not a complaint arising from animal grief; rather, it is the birds thanks for the gifts of the Most Merciful.

Moreover, according to Said Nursi, every sort of being–even stars–has a nightingale. But the most excellent and noble nightingale, whose voice was the most ringing, whose recitation was the most complete, whose thanks were the most universal, who brought all beings of the heavens and Earth in the universes garden to rapture through his poetry was Prophet Muhammad, the nightingale of the luminous Quran. Here, the rose is associated with divine knowledge and wisdom.

Conclusion

Today, people prefer to buy roses for special occasions as precious gifts. As Shakespeare said, there is a meaning kept in the rose that we have to understand, just as the rose keeps its scent within itself. On Valentines Day roses express our love, on Mothers Day they tell our mothers that we remember their mercy toward us, and on Teachers Day they show a students respect for his or her teachers.

Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this symbolic ancestry. The popularity of roses seems to rise and fall according to gardening trends of the time. Gardeners realize that roses fit the lifestyle of every century. With the rise of emphasis on spirituality in the twenty-first century, roses are once again enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

Roses have a special hold upon us and, even though it is hard to capture in words, there is something about roses that evokes a response beyond the virtue of great beauty. This article has presented some historical traces of roses in several civilizations. Perhaps you will associate them with a favorite meaning or figure. So, would you like to finish the following sonnet of Shakespeare in your own way?

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I …?(3)
(the original says in her cheeks)

Footnotes

1. www.poetry.com
2. Omar Ali-Shah, tr. The Rose Garden (Gulistan) of Saadi (Reno, NV: Tractus, 1997).
3. From My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun, Sonnet 130, www.poets.org.

Unpreparedness played an unquestionable role in this tragedy. Even if American officials had been sufficiently informed in advance about how the attacks would occur and that the targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and other sites, they would never have given the slightest credit to the idea that œAmerican pilots would launch a kamikaze attack from the air. Nor would they have increased all security measures in the area.

Take any strong country, none of which has a direct enemy. One type of enemy probably is not happy with a strong countrys policies. Another enemy would be participating in a counter-activity with a regional motivation. A third enemy would wage a direct attack on the strong country so that it would be top-listed on the global agenda. In addition, it would seek an opportunity to express its criticism to the world. A fourth enemy would organize acts of terror throughout the world in order to realize its short- and long-term political and other goals.

Terrorists aim to scare people, to obstruct the governments authorized arms, and to challenge the federal government in the political and military arenas. However, these reasons are not enough to explain what we are facing today. The modern world confronts more than ordinary internationalterrorism, for the terror we see today is new and has large dimensions. Its operational and philosophical characteristics are now under investigation.

Recently, American society has observed murders committed by students at schools, collective suicides of families, kidnappings, Timothy McVeighs Oklahoma bombing, mail bombs, poisoned letters, and so on. In my opinion, such activities cannot be coincidental and are not very favorable developments in this great country.

This most cruel and violent terrorist activity seems to have been planned to the smallest detail. Also, its perpetrators benefited from the methods of previous attacks: the psychological training of kamikaze pilots, how to hijack airplanes and use them like rockets, obtaining information about the air defense system and target weaknesses, and how the attacks would be directed were all carefully analyzed.

It is impossible to understand this tragic attack completely without a clear assessment of its perpetrators goals. Perhaps the driving motivation could be an emotional factor of punishing America for one of its acts or for being what it is today. This basic assumption was surely a significant incentive.

The perpetrators obviously wanted to create a shocking psychological effect on governmental officials as well as on the entire society, to defeat the opponents active defense power, to display international terrorism as if equipped with vast facilities, and especially to ensure that the American government changes its current policies. Another option also could be a type of adventure-seeking insanity or just a furious mob, both of which have found no place for themselves in this world but nevertheless wanted to draw the worlds attention to themselves.

No institution is better suited to preach clean air, water, and land than the institutions that profess a love of God and God’s Creation, Bingham says. There’s no place in the New Testament where it says we should use energy-efficient appliances. But everything we know about Jesus says that he identified with the poor and the marginalized and that he loved his neighbor. Global warming is hurting creation at a rapid rate and will soon cause great harm to the developing nations, who are as usual hit harder and sooner than the rest of us. Already we are seeing more severe storms, disease, drought and floods leading to famine and malnutrition.

Along with Steve MacAusland, a video producer from Dedham, Mass., Bingham founded the Episcopal Power and Light ministry, and later spin-off interfaith programs in states ranging from power-strapped California to oil-rich Texas. In California alone, the group persuaded 27 churches to install solar panels and 61 churches to switch to a renewable power company called Green Mountain Energy. By consolidating the purchasing power of the state’s churches, EP&L was able to secure green energy at a great price.

Unfortunately, the chain of events surrounding deregulation of the state’s power industry forced Green Mountain Energy to pull the plug on their California customers. In turn, churches had no choice but to again power their sacred spaces with fossil fuels. We carry tremendous guilt knowing that we are polluting out neighbor’s air every time we turn on the lights. We have been forced into sinful behavior that frightens us. We may end up in a place so hot it will make global warming seem like a cold shower.

Bingham: I am a member of the Episcopal Environmental Network, a national group of people that come together once a year to talk about the issues that the church wants to get involved in. I’ve been a member of it when the national church first formed this organization It’s also kind of a support group for those of us around the country who are feeling pain over the degradation of the environment. We kind of lament and pray and support each other. If you feel like you’re the lone person crying in the wilderness, it’s important to have a group come together and talk about these things.

A man from Massachusetts, Steve Causland, came on the committee in about 1996. We were on a long hike one day and talking about our committee, and we decided we really wanted to do something to make a difference. So we had to figure out what we saw as the most important issue facing the world today and it was climate change.

So over the next year, he and I founded Episcopal Power and Light (EP&L). I had already founded a 501 (c)(3) called the Regeneration Project, an interfaith ministry to link people of faith with their ecology. I hadn’t done anything with this yet I’d been in seminaryso it was just waiting there for a project.

Thompson: What denominations have been working on this?

Bingham: Well, here in California, the California Council of Churches is all the Protestant churches across the board. And then we have a member of the board of rabbis and a member of COEJL, which is Coalition for Environmental Jewish Life, and a fellow down in Los Angeles who is Muslim. So it truly is interfaith. And each one of us has a responsibility to get our constituency on board. We have a congregational covenant which you can download from the Internet. There are all these different areas where you can check off the things your congregation are willing to do. It’s targeted at the leadership of the church, whether it be the director of a Presbyterian church or a rabbi of a synagogue, because it asks them to educate their congregation on global warming. I’m in the process now of putting together materials that they’ll be able to use to take this education into their congregation.

Thompson: How does your message differ from that of environmentalists who address the issue from a secular point of view?

Bingham: We bring the moral component. We see energy conservation and efficiency as a responsibility for people of faith, as loving one’s neighbor. So it comes from the heart rather than the pocketbook. Conserving energy with the consciousness that what you say, someone else might be able to use is putting your faith into action.

Thompson: I like your update of a familiar parable: Harder for a wasteful consumer to get into heaven than an SUV to pass through the eye of a needle. You’re preaching some messages that are pretty uncomfortable for people to hear, messages people have heard many times in many forums but not necessarily taken to heart. What do you think it will take to shift thinking away from overconsumption and consumerism?

Bingham: It’s true. I think they need to hear the message more than once, but with our ministry we plant those seeds. With our train the trainer program, more people will be able to articulate the message, and I think we’ll have a huge impact. The more people out there preaching this kind of thing, the more effect it can have.

Last Sunday was the first time I’d given an environmental sermon at the 11 o’clock service. There was such a positive responseeveryone was clapping at the end that doesn’t happen here very often. That told me that people are ready to hear this message. It was affirming to folks who are already beginning to think that way because of what they’re reading in the newspaper about energy and global warming. Now they hear this and think Oh my God, the church is with me on this.

We’re still on the cutting edge of the ministry. I don’t know if there were 400 or 800 people in that congregation on Sunday, but I know that probably half of them are hearing this message for the first time. But they’ll hear it again.

And it is such a perfect thing for the church to do. Often what we read in the paper about religious organizations is the bad newssome clergy member who broke his or her vows in one way or another. This is good news about the church. Here we are at the forefront, doing a positive thing that’s going to hopefully save the planet.

Thompson: It’s one thing to preach to a liberal, environmentally-minded congregation in San Francisco, but how do you see your ministry winning conservative Christians who support Bush’s energy policies? Have you done any work in the Bible Belt?

Bingham: One of the interfaith programs is in Texasit isn’t founded yet, because we’ve just started our work, but I have been an advisor to the dioceses of West Texas on renewable energy, and we are planning a launching event there in October. In June I flew into Corpus Christi, Texas, which is the heart of the oil country, and talked to the bishop there about powering their council meeting in February with wind. They haven’t agreed to do that yet, but I think they’re going to. Green Mountain has already agreed to buy the wind and resell it back to the dioceses council.

The Episcopal Church powered its 15,000-person convention in Denver last July with wind purchased from the border of Wyoming and Colorado. It was the first convention in this country to be powered by renewable energy. Then we challenged the Democratic and Republican conventions to do it; the Democrats did. At the Episcopal convention, the National Renewable Energy lab, which is in Boulder, Colorado, set up a display right next to the EP&L booth. We also a little bucket on our booth and asked everybody to contribute one dollar to the extra cost of wind (it was literally 10 cents per day per person to have wind for the ten-day conference).

The idea blew the general convention. When we got back to our offices, we started getting calls from people all over the country. A woman in Tennessee was so eager to switch to renewable power that she did the research herself and made it happen. Now we’re going to Tennessee to do an event there in November, and we’re going to Detroit to do the same thing. The reason I was in Texas was that the women down there decided they wanted to power their convention with wind. So it really started something. In Nashville, the first big cathedral there (get name) is buying green power from the Tennessee Valley Association.

Thompson: What has inspired you personally to do this work?

Bingham: I grew up down in Woodside, Calif., which is a pretty rural communityor used to be, before Silicon Valley started building all these huge houses down there. I spent so much time alone in nature that I developed a very strong sense of divine companionship in the wilderness. Then way later in lifeabout 1985, and I was living in New York, and I was a trustee for the Environmental Defense Fund. Every one of board meetings has a presentation by a staff scientist. For 10 years I listened to the threat of global warming, overfishing, dying coral reefs, and deforestation. I just at one point began to think: Where is the religious community in this problem? Why don’t we hear the religious voice? These are the people who sit in the pews on Sunday and say they love God and probably deep inside them love what God loves, and therefore love Creation, but they just haven’t paid attention.

Thompson: You’ve preached about the effects of global warming severe storms, disease, drought, floods, famine…Sounds like the Apocalypse.

Bingham: It’s interesting that you say that. My 21-year-old son answered the door yesterday, and some Bible-toting folks were out front. He said: You don’t have to talk to us because my mother’s a priest and she preaches about the environment. Right away the woman started quoting Revelations and the end of the world.

I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have knowledge of God’s intentions. But I’m more hopeful than thinking about the end of the world. Because I think that human hearts can and will change, and that we will stop this destructive way and bring things back together.

Thompson: What obstacles have you faced in this work, and how have you overcome them?

Bingham: The internal ones are relatively minor today. Ten years ago, it was great turmoil, because I felt alone in this work. There were not other clergy who would agree with me on any of this. They thought that I was mixing politics with religionit wasn’t seen as something that involved human souls, which was what the church all about. People would say isn’t the church about people? Those first few years were very difficult, and this is why I believe that there is so much hope. The change between a few years ago and today is just phenomenal. People are there; they understand the connection between faith and the environment and religion.

I stillbut not anywhere near as oftensometimes meet people who say that global warming isn’t real. In fact, yesterday I got an e-mail from someone who heard my Sunday sermon saying that I was wrong in saying that human behavior was causing global warming. He said it was actually being caused by a volcano in Hawaii.

Thompson: How do you respond to that?

Bingham: I haven’t, and I’ll tell you why. I used to get all wrapped up in one person’s view. If there were a hundred people in a room and 99 of them stood up and clapped, and one person said, you’re demented, I would go and spend hours with that one person. I just don’t do that anymore. I’m sorry they’re not better educated, but it isn’t worth my time. I may in fact recommend a couple books for this fellow to read, like The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspanit’s a wonderful, very readable book about global warmingor something by Michael Oppenheimer, a scientist and climatologist, who has a lot of good work and a book by Steven Schneider, who’s at Stanford. I could put this person in touch with some of this literature and ask them to read about it and then come back and tell me that global warming is happening because of the volcano in Hawaii. If that was the case, I’d probably say, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

Thompson: How do you personally experience God in nature?

Bingham: I ask them to be mindful, really conscious, of every single one of their behaviors. The cups we use, the cars we drive the clothes we buy. I don’t condemn people who have the means to buy what they need. But when you buy ten times more than what you need. I live in a neighborhood where the recycling bins are sometimes just shockingin one week the amount of packaging that comes from Saks Fifth Avenue and Wilkes Bashford? You think how can these people possibly wear all these clothes? That’s where I draw the line. Now I know there are folks who will say, well if we didn’t go in there and buy all these clothes, think of the jobs these people who are selling the clothes wouldn’t have, and the people who are making the clothes and on and on and on down the chain. But I think there’s plenty to go around in this world for all of our needs. I think wealthy communities have to change their ways.

Thompson: What does the Bible have to say about protecting the environment?

Bingham: As you know, the Bible has lots and lots and lots of stories. I tend to take a metaphorical, not literal, interpretation of the Bible. Throughout Scripture, there are various teachings of restraintnot taking more than you need, loving your neighbor, giving to other people. People often ask me Was Jesus an environmentalist? Jesus identified with marginal people. And probably today he would identify with endangered species and coral reefs and forests, because he identified with pain and suffering, and right now creation is in pain and suffering. So I would go so far to say that if Jesus were here, he would not drive an SUV. He’d be on the White House steps with you. Do you see a relationship between America’s spiritual and environmental crises?

In Al Gore’s book, The Earth in Balance, he said just thatthe environmental crisis is a spiritual oneand I think it’s absolutely true. We’ve forgotten where we came from. We’ve forgotten our connection to all Creation. Children walk through the supermarkets and think that the bananas grow right out of the shelves there. Working with my compost, and planting the garden and eating food that comes out of itit’s a spiritual experience. It connects you to the land and teaches you the whole cycle of life. We’ve lost that.

Can we get reconnected to it? I hope so. I think that when we were an agricultural world, it was a lot easier, but being in cities, it’s hard to do. I think that some of those summer programs that take teenagers out into the wilderness are probably amazingly life-changing. And I think our parks and national recreational areascity parks and street treesall those things are really important. Everybody should have a backyard. It’s very deep inside of us, that connection to the land. But it needs to be awakened. We’ve gotten so far from the land that something has to reach out and stimulate us.

There are some wonderful teachers now that are starting to teach ecology in schools, and I think the church can play a magnificent role in this. Imagine if Sunday school classes started teaching about the different ways that God made birds’ beaks, that they eat the different kinds of seeds because the way their beaks are shapedI think all those kinds of things will help children get the sense that God is bigger than they aresomething that we have to live in awe of.

Thompson: Where do you see this ministry in 10 years?

Bingham: We’re getting ready to launch a program out of the Cathedral that’s going to be magnificent. Five years from now it will be, I hope, one of the best faith-based programs in the country. We want to have a curriculum that will link theology and ecology for all faith groups and train facilitators from different regions. If we can raise the money and that actually happens, you can imagine we need a bigger budget, we need more people. If it all happens, ten years from now, I see it as a viable ministry coming out of the Cathedral or perhaps the Regeneration Project, which is the home for Episcopal Power and Light will be its own 501 (c)(3) and we’ll be teaching this all over the world.

It’s hard to say. We’ve only been in business so to speak for three years. We’ve tripled our budget. A year ago, nobody was on staffmy partner and I were working for freebut this last year, we’ve been able to pay ourselves a salary and hire an assistant. We’re also looking for an office manager and a development director. So I see this getting huge.

Thompson: Can you leave us with a good quote from the Bible that relates to your work?

Bingham: It’s so simple. It’s the one I talk about all the time. The first and great commandment is to Love God. The second is like onto it, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Therein lies this ministryif you love your neighbor, don’t pollute your neighbor’s air and water. You don’t trash something that your neighbor could use. That’s really it.

I am not sure we will ever know the truth about the causes of this terrible tragedy. There are a lot of things we still do not know and may never know. I do not know what happened as far as who is responsible for Sept 11th. Since there is no evidence, all I can do is analyze the event

I do not believe in conspiracy theories. So I do not think the Bush administration engineered this whole thing. However, I can say this: the Bush administration has effectively utilized the tragedy of September 11th to advance an agenda which it already had and brought with it to power when it was selected in 2000.

In this sense, there is a close analogy to the Cold War. For one thing, it has silenced any opposition to the postwar political movement that sought to dismantle the state’s power to regulate the economy. For example, in 1947 there was considerable public political debate about the full employment bill that would guarantee full domestic employment in America. But in the 1950s, after the Greek civil war and the announcement of the Truman Doctrine that formalized the Cold War against communism, these discussions disappeared from the political horizon.

If there had been no September 11th, could you have imagined, with a nation tumbling headfirst into a severe economic recession as America appears to be doing, that there would not be a considerable mobilization of Democrats, workers, women, African-Americans, and otherpopular constituencies to pressure this Republican administration to make some accommodation, to begin to try to use the power of the government to help the nation out of the recession? These issues, which galvanized the population, disappeared from the radar screen in the aftermath of September 11th. No one is debating them right now.

It is also true that September 11th and the war on terrorism does give America something external that helps the government suppress internal dissent. But it is also a source of political capital that America can use to muscle its allies into doing things they might not otherwise do. I do not think America would have received the kind of cooperation that ti did in Afghanistan had it not been for September 11th.

In conclusion, the Bush administration has utilized this event for its benefit. Wars are excellent tools to draw people’s attention to something else especially one with no end in sight that has targeted America.

Fundamentalism

After September 11, discussions on Islamic fundamentalism began yet again. I think it is easier to understand fundamentalism in political, rather than religious, terms. What creates conflict is fundamentally contradictory interests. I think there are individuals in nations that have different political, economic, and cultural interests.

I do not think there is such a thing as Islamic fundamentalism any more than there is a Christian fundamentalism or a Jewish fundamentalism. That is what is going on here. I do not buy this argument that there is an Islamic fundamentalism whose interests are fundamentally contrary to those of the West, which I also think is an imagined community. What is the West? Are Japan and South Korea, Israel and Haiti, Finland and Spain part of it?

Al-Aqsa was fortunate to exist in the same time period as the Kabah. And, just like the Kabah, it emerged from the ground as if bursting forth to comply with orders coming from above. Sometimes it was exalted to the rank of being the niche for devout people, and at other times it served as the pulpit of holy individuals. For centuries, this sacred and blessed place opened its wings to its inhabitants, even at the most pitiless times of disbelief. It let believers breathe security while becoming the paradise of this life.

This sublime temple now looks at our faces with sorrow and exhaustion. Her face has been darkened by suffering, for she is far from what she once was: the source of thousands of holy experiences. When we contemplate al-Aqsa Mosque in this pitiful state, it feels like we are bleeding internally and can no longer breathe. This auspicious niche, this honored pulpit that once had celestial whispers coming to our hearts, now looks like a candle that has been put out, a skeleton about to collapse.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is a victim of injustice and cruelty. Her existence is squeezed in between her friends infidelity and her enemies torture. Once she had her lips at our hearts whispering tranquility, not knowing that in the future she would become a stammering tongue singing a song of sadness.

When I first saw her current appearance, I was deeply saddened. From now on, faithful hearts will not be able to meet and hug each other with love, or to roar Allah’s name among the walls of this place in which Prophet Adam’s voice still echoes, Prophet Abraham’s breaths are still felt, Prophets David’s and Solomon’s cries are still heard, and Prophet Muhammad’s journey to infinity to unite with his Beloved is still known. Alas, these doors will not be able to open wide to believers “ neither slowly nor quickly and without happiness and enthusiasm.

It looks like all of her dreams and fancies are now over, her surrounding lights turned off, the prayers to God heard no longer. It is said that even the rocks and trees have ears. Would that they had tongues too! Yes, for then they could express what they have been through. Perhaps then the people who did this would be afraid and abstain from their evil. Maybe then her faithless companions would come to their senses and rescue her from this tragic slavery.

Ideologies recognize different ideas as hostile and different people as enemies. According to Brzezinski, the former national security advisor under President Carter (1976-80), the nineteenth-century believer in an Almighty Creator Who had the power to do anything changed into a secular fanatic who believes that our world can be turned into a paradise. Moreover, such people are willing to destroy humanity and nature to realize this goal. Totalitarian authorities of the twentieth century tried to create utopias that could control reality and all elements of a person’s life. These started from public organizations and extended to individual beliefs, from the highest level to the lower levels”all from one center.(1) 

Based on this, we understand that all the hatred and animosity we are experiencing now has been caused by contemporary humanity’s values and measures to define first the concept of me and then the concept of others. If that is the case, it seems that it will be impossible to achieve the much-desired peaceful environment without changing these definitions.

Anywhere in the world where hatred and animosity have resulted in conflict and war, one important factor stands out: After developed nations controlled and governed weak and undeveloped nations, they just left them with primitive farming skills and did nothing to help them build better civilizations and to industrialize.(2) Advanced nations also conducted anthropological and sociological studies of their colonized people that stressed racial, tribal, and religious differences. Later on, these differences caused ethnic and religious conflict.

The fact that many ideas about the New World Order developed after the Cold War are based on the clash of civilizations thesis gives us some ideas and clues about the conflicts that continue to confront us.(3)

If we really want to achieve global peace and dialog and end the wars and conflict caused by differences of race, color, language and feelings of hatred and animosity, we should stress a mutual identity that relies on universal values and principals. For example: We all are created by the same Creator. We are all the children of Adam and Eve, and therefore brothers and sisters. God created the world for all living creatures.

Footnotes

1. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1996
2. Ernest Gellner, The Mighty Pen, Times Literature Supplement (February 1993), 19
3. Samuel A. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs (summer 1993).

An exact science is expressed in the highly sophisticated language of mathematics, whereas Sufism is based on meditation and insists that the Sufis’ insight cannot be verbalized. Reality, as experienced by Sufis, is completely indeterminate and undifferentiated. They do not see the intellect as their source of knowledge, but merely use it to analyze and interpret their personal experience.

The parallel between scientific experiments and Sufi experiences may seem surprising due to the very different nature of observation. Physicists perform experiments involving elaborate teamwork and highly sophisticated technology; Sufis obtain their knowledge purely through introspection, without machinery, and in the privacy of dhikr (meditation). Repeating an experiment in elementary particle physics requires many years of training; deep Sufi experience generally requires many years of training under an experienced master. The complexity and efficiency of the physicist’s technical apparatus is matched, if not surpassed, by the Sufi’s consciousness, both physical and spiritual, while in deep dhikr. Thus scientists and Sufis have developed highly sophisticated methods of observing nature that are inaccessible to the layperson.

Dhikr

Dhikr seeks to silence the mind and shift awareness from the rational to the intuitive mode of consciousness. This is achieved by concentrating on one item, like breathing or focusing on the sound of Allah or la ilaha illa Allah. Even prayer, which is considered dhikr to silence the mind, leads to feelings of peace and serenity that are characteristic of dhikr’s more static forms. These skills are used to develop the meditative mode of consciousness.

In dhikr, the mind is emptied of all thoughts and concepts and thus prepared to function for long periods through its intuitive mode. When the rational mind is silenced, the intuitive mode produces an extraordinary awareness, for the environment is experienced without the filter of conceptual thinking. This meditative state’s main characteristic is the experience of oneness with the surrounding environment, a state of consciousness in which fragmentation ceases and fades into undifferentiated unity.

Insight into reality

Sufism is based on direct insights into the nature of reality; physics is based on observing natural phenomena in scientific experiments. In physics, models and theories are approximate and basic to modern scientific research. Thus Einstein’s aphorism: As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. (1) Whenever the intellect analyzes the essential nature of things, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. Sufis have always recognized this, but it has recently become a problem in science.

A great variety of natural phenomena belong to the scientists’ macroscopic environment and thus to the realm of their sensory experience. Since their language’s images and intellectual concepts are abstracted from this very experience, they are limited to describing natural phenomena. But since the atomic and subatomic worlds lie beyond our sensory perception, knowledge of them is no longer derived from direct sensory experience. Thus our ordinary language, with its images from the world of the senses, is no longer adequate to describe the observed phenomena.

As we penetrate deeper into nature, we have to abandon more of the images and concepts of ordinary language. By probing inside the atom and investigating its structure, science transcended the limits of our sensory imagination and thus could no longer rely with absolute certainty on logic and common sense. Quantum physics provided scientists with the first glimpses of the essential nature of things. Like Sufis, physicists now deal with a nonsensory experience of reality and encounter the paradoxical aspects of this experience. As a result, the models and images of modern physics are akin to those of the Sufis.

The problem of communication

Scientists realized that our common language cannot describe atomic and subatomic reality. With the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics in physics, it became clear that this new knowledge transcends classical logic and cannot be described in ordinary language. Sufis have always realized that reality transcends ordinary language and were not afraid to go beyond logic and common concepts. The problem of language faced by both Sufis and physicists is the same: Both want to communicate their knowledge, but when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions.

The duality of light

In quantum physics, many paradoxical situations are connected with light’s dual nature or, more generally, with electromagnetic radiation. Light produces interference phenomena, which is associated with waves of light. This is observed when two sources of light are used, for the end result is bright and dim patterns of light. On the other hand, electromagnetic radiation also produces the photoelectric effect: when short wave length light (e.g., ultraviolet light, x-rays, or gamma rays) strike the surface of some metals, they can knock off electrons from the surface. Therefore, the surface must consist of moving particles.

In the early stages of quantum theory, physicists were puzzled by how electromagnetic radiation could consist of particles (entities confined to a very small volume) and waves (which spread over a large area in space) simultaneously. Neither language nor imagination could deal very well with this kind of reality.

Sufism has developed several ways of dealing with reality’s paradoxical aspects. The works of Attar (d.1299), Hafiz (14th century), Ibn al-˜Arabi (d. 1240), Rumi (d. 1273), Bistami (d. 875), and others are full of intriguing contradictions. Furthermore, their compact, powerful, and extremely poetic language is meant to throw the reader’s mind off its familiar tracks of logical reasoning. Heisenberg once asked Bohr: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?(2)

Our sensory experiences, whose realm is the macroscopic world, allow us to draw images and intellectual concepts and express them in a language. This language was sufficient and adequate for describing natural phenomena. The Newtonian mechanistic model of the universe described the macroscopic world. In the twentieth century, physicists verified the existence of atoms and subatomic particles, the ultimate building blocks of nature, through experimentation. As these particles are beyond our sensory perceptions, our knowledge of them is no longer derived from direct sensory experience. Thus we face the problems mentioned earlier when dealing with the essential nature of things.

Modern physics

Sufis say that the direct mystical experience of reality is a momentous event that shakes the very foundations of one’s worldview, that it is the most startling event that can happen in the realm of human consciousness, and that it upsets every form of standardized experience. Some Sufis describe it as the bottom of a pail breaking through.

Physicists in the early part of the twentieth century felt much the same way when this new atomic reality shook their worldview’s foundations. They described it in terms that often were very similar to those used by Sufis. Thus Heisenberg wrote: Recent developments in modern physics can only be understood when one realizes that here the foundations of physics have started moving; and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science.(3)

The discoveries of modern physics necessitated profound changes in such concepts as space, time, matter, object, and cause and effect. Since such concepts are so basic to our way of experiencing the world, those physicists who were forced to change them felt something of a shock. Out of these changes, a new and radically different worldview was born and continues to be formulated. Quantum theory implies the essential interconnectedness of nature, thus forcing us to see the universe not as a collection of physical objects but as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole. This is how Sufis experience the world.

Space-time

Sufis seem to attain nonordinary states of consciousness that allow them to transcend the three-dimensional world of everyday life and experience a higher, multidimensional reality. In relativistic physics, if one can visualize the four-dimensional space“time reality, there would be nothing paradoxical at all. Sufis have notions of space and time that are very similar to those implied by relativity theory.

In Sufism, there seems to be a strong intuition for the space“time character of reality. Sufis experience a state of complete dissolution in which there is no distinction between mind and body, subject and object. In a state of pure experience, there is no space without time and no time without space, for they are interpenetrating. Physicists base their notion of space“time on scientific experiments, whereas Sufis base it on Sufism.

Modern physics’ relativistic models and theories illustrate the two basic elements of Sufism’s worldview: the universe’s oneness and intrinsically dynamic character. Space is curved to different degrees, and time flows at different rates in different parts of the universe. As our notions of a three-dimensional Euclidean space and time’s linear flow are limited to our ordinary experience of the physical world, they have to be abandoned when we extend this experience.

Sufis talk of extending their experience of the world in higher states of consciousness, and affirm that these states involve a radically different experience of space and time. They emphasize that they go beyond ordinary three-dimensional space in meditation, and, even more forcefully, that they transcend the ordinary awareness of time. Insteadof a linear succession of instants, they experience an infinite, timeless, and yet dynamic present. The spiritual world contains no time divisions such as past, present, and future, for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present, where life quivers in its true sense.

Mass“energy equivalence

Einstein showed mass“energy equivalence through a simple mathematical equation: E=mc2. Physicists measure a particle’s mass in the corresponding energy units. The discovery that mass is nothing but a form of energy forced us to modify our concept of a particle in an essential way. Hence particles are seen as quanta (bundles) of energy and as not consisting of any basic stuff. But energy is associated with activity and processes, which means that subatomic particles have an intrinsically dynamic nature and are forms in four-dimensional entities in space“time. Therefore they have both a space and a time aspect: their space aspect makes them appear as objects with a certain mass, and their time aspect makes them appear as processes involving the equivalent energy.

When subatomic particles are observed, we never see them as any substance. All we see is continuously changing patterns of one to the other, a continuos dance of energy. The subatomic world’s particles are not only active in the sense of moving very quickly, but are processes. Matter’s existence and activity cannot be separated, for they are only different aspects of the same space“time reality.

In their nonordinary states of consciousness, Sufis seem to be aware of the interpenetration of space and time at a macroscopic level. Thus they see the macroscopic world in a way that is very similar to physicists’ idea of subatomic particles. For Sufis, all compounded things are impermanent. The reality underlying all phenomena is beyond all forms and defies all description and specification. Hence it is formless, empty, void. Sufis consider the world’s phenomena to be nothing but illusory manifestations of the mind and as having no reality of their own.

Conclusion

Modern physics’ principal theories and models lead to a view of the world that is internally consistent and in perfect harmony with that of Sufism. The significance of their parallel views is beyond doubt. Both emerge when researchers inquire into the essential nature of thingsinto the deeper realms of matter in physics and into the deeper realms of consciousness in Sufismwhen they discover a different reality behind the superficial mundane appearance of everyday life. Physicists derive their knowledge from experimentation, whereas Sufis acquire their knowledge by meditative insight. Sufis look within and explore their consciousness at its various levels. In fact, the Sufi’s experience of his or her body is often seen as the key to their experience of the world.

Another similarity is that both groups’ observations take place in realms that are inaccessible to the ordinary senses: the realms of the atomic and subatomic worlds for physicists, and the nonordinary states of consciousness, in which the sense world is transcended, for Sufis. For both groups, these multidimensional experiences transcend the sensory world and thus are almost impossible to express in ordinary language.

Quantum physics and Sufism are two complementary manifestations of the human mind’s rational and intuitive faculties. Modern physicists experience the world through the rational mind’s extreme specialization; Sufis experience it through the intuitive mind’s extreme specialization. Both are necessary for a fuller understanding of the world. Sufism is necessary to understand the deepest nature of things, and science is essential for modern life. Therefore we need a dynamic interplay between Sufi intuition and scientific analysis.

Footnotes

1. Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton University Press, 1981); Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1980), 27.
2. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), 42.
3. Ibid., 167.

References

1. Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boston: Shambhala, 1980.
2. Dukas, Helen and Banesh Hoffmann, eds. Albert Einstein: The Human Side. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
3. Einstein, Albert. Essays in Science. New York: Philosophical Library, 1934.
4. . Out of My Later Years. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.
5. Ernst, Carl. Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.
6. Heisenberg, Walter. The Physicist’s Conception of Nature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958.
7. . Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958.
8. . Across the Frontiers. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
9. Karplus, Robert. Physics and Man. New York: W. A. Benjamin, Inc., 1970.
10. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Awakening: A Sufi Experience. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.
11. Schrodinger, Ewin. My View of the World. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
12. Schrodinger, Erwin and Roger Penrose. What is Life? Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
13. Wilber, Ken ed. Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists. Boston: Shambhala, 1984.
14. Zukav, Gary and David Finkelstein. The Dancing Wu-Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1994.

I only care about myself. Whether the rest of the world collapses or not does not concern me, is the idea reflected by such events. This attitude of indifferent haughtiness leads to the following result: A world in which I have no welfare must be destroyed or If I am not loved, no one else can be loved. Our welfare level today has been unable to stop other peoples suffering, for we have not noticed what they experienced in the past. Such people were as glad at this tragedy as if they had taken revenge themselves, in the true sense of the word, while watching the tears and shock of the rich. We have just realized that the world is small, and that violence impacts everyone.

Terrorism is an absolute threat to all civilizations. As there is still no commonly accepted definition of terrorism, any state’s reaction to it will not lessen the threat it poses; on the contrary, it actually might strengthen it. The future of the world rests upon reaching a just response to this horrible tragedy and discussing the matter comprehensively. The fact that politics has gone clerical and that religion has become politicized makes some global events of the modern world more global.

The September 11th tragedy shows that terrorism is able to span regional and continental borders. This obliges the entire world to unify itself in order to face this challenge. To this end, we need to deal primarily with social problems and poverty, close the economic gap, and prevent strong countries from oppressing weaker ones. In the face of our world’s real contradictions, there is no second alternative to stopping terrorism, which constantly produces the most cruel incidents. In order to benefit from Earth’s riches, we must channel human consciousness, science, and technology properly so that they may serve good instead of evil; so that they may serve humanity’s collective development instead of destruction. Globalization can absolve itself only if it solves our world’s global problems.

As a relatively new and exciting science, chaos science grew very slowly during its infancy. Yet in the last decade, due to active research in many areas, it has became one of the hottest topics in academia as well as the popular science press. Many books have been published, and millions of Internet pages have been designed full of fractal pictures.1 Given that chaos is associated with disorder or confusion in a system or condition, why does it continue to attract so many people?

History of chaos

To understand chaos, one first has to understand the Newtonian worldview. Sir Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) development of the calculus and laws of classical mechanics began a scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe that caused all subsequent scientists to view nature from a profoundly different perspective. Now that they finally could determine the dynamics of bodies by simple equations, they believed that they had found the ultimate eternal rules that shape the universe.

French physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), who based his work upon Newton’s work, is credited with the following famous quotation (often referred to as Laplace’s Demon): ‘We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.’2

Laplace’s Demon states the idea of determinism, that the past completely determines the future. One can clearly see why determinism was so attractive to scientists at that time. However, in Laplace’s word everything was predetermined: no chance, no choice, no uncertainty. A solid, inevitable destiny had frozen the events in every corner of the past and is continuously spreading out to the future to do same there. Determinism apparently invokes the idea that whole universe is like a clock. God set it in motion at the beginning of creation and then removed Himself, for everything had been planed before. The ideas that there was no place for free will and that God could not interfere killed the belief in a soul and, consequently, in spirituality. Philosophers and scientists have discussed this for many years. Determinism affected many philosophies and triggered the major ideological movements of during eighteenth century, especially in Europe.

Toward the end of the 1800s, mathematicians and scientists began encountering some very difficult equations, some of which we know today are unsolvable. The most troublesome are various nonlinear differential equations. Even though it looks like such a simple and totally deterministic system, the problem of three bodies attracting each other with purely gravitational forces (e.g., the sun, Earth, and moon triple) turns out to be missing an exact solution. At first, such problems were cast-off as special cases and largely ignored.

One reason for this also might come from the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, which dazzled even the great physicists, and the lack of fast computers at that time. When these equations finally were studied in detail, a fundamental change that would ultimately overthrow determinism began to occur in mathematics and science. An indication of the science that would be come to be known as ‘chaos’ began to appear.

Why does chaos interest people?

In contrast to its common usage, chaos does not actually mean disorder or confusion. By definition, it should occur in well-defined orderly systems. However, most natural physical systems often can exhibit an unpredictable or intractable behavior in the long run, even though the system is defined by clear-cut orderly mechanisms. In this sense, chaos can be defined as unpredictability rather than disorder.

For example, meteorologists use 12 sets of well-defined equations to forecast the weather. They relate such atmospheric parameters as pressure, temperature, flow speed, and time to each other. One can make a computer program that calculates the parameters’ final values by taking any initial conditions as the run’s starting point. In principle, therefore, if we know the initial temperature, pressure, and time values that describe today’s weather conditions, it is possible to derive tomorrow’s weather conditions by running a computer program, which is nothing more than a chain reaction of numerical iterations.

However, in practice, initial conditions cannot be measured exactly and so contain a degree of uncertainty. But since the system’s governing laws are known, one may estimate the effect of errors on future results. Hence, instead of giving the exact results, one can provide an approximate range of possibilities. This range can still be very useful, provided that the deviations do not stray too far from the actual values. In addition, knowing how the error grows in the system might help us understand and control the systems. But if we apply these error estimates to weather forecast equations, we will encounter a large problem, for errors grow exponentially in such systems. Even a tiny deviation at the beginning can create huge deviations from the actual values. It also can provide unrelated or nonsensical results.

An example of chaotic systems

This numerical behavior was first observed by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz, a pioneer in modern chaos work. Fascinated by the results he obtained, in the early 1960s he gave an interesting metaphor to explain the situation of high sensitivity to initial conditions: A butterfly’s slight wing movement (i.e., a little deviation from the initial conditions) can change the future in a way that causes some chain reaction that ultimately result in a hurricane.

Such systems that exhibit a very high sensitivity to initial conditions are called chaotic systems. Chaos comes from the mathematical properties hidden in the equations defining the system, and such unpredictability cannot be removed. Even if the measurements’ quality could be improved by minimizing errors, chaos never disappears from a chaotic system.

One may suppose that chaos occurs in complicated systems, such as weather forecast systems having 12 sets of equations. But even much simpler systems, such as billiards, can exhibit a very high degree chaos. A usual billiard system consists of many balls and a rectangular shaped table. I challenge master billiard players by requesting them to play the game in a stadium-shaped table. I am sure that they will find it difficult to do so, because such billiard tables would be chaotic systems.

If a system is defined as chaotic, this does not necessarily mean that its behavior is totally undefined all the time. As in stadium billiards, a ball has to be inside the billiards, so it should be somewhere on the table, even though sometimes we cannot foretell its exact position because of chaos. Besides, if you send the ball with a velocity perpendicular to a straight side, it will bounce back and forth between the two sides forever. Therefore, depending on which initial conditions are taken, chaotic systems also can show characteristics of regular motion.

A 3-body problem (in general n-body problems) such as the sun, Earth, and moon system, is a chaotic system. But since we can predict the motions of these celestial objects with great precision for many years in the future, why do we call this system chaotic? This triple system possesses a very special set of conditions: distance between bodies, their masses, and their velocities. These parameters cause it to exhibit near-regular behavior. It is analogous to the example of stadium billiards given above, for this triple system bounces back and forth between the table’s sides.

Conditions for chaos

Chaos also can be caused by other factors than just uncertainties measured in the initial conditions. Scientists generally define hypothetical systems by isolating them from the outside world in order to simplify them as much as possible. However, as even objects in the real world that are far apart interact with each other, no system in the real world can be isolated. Given this, a closed (isolated) system might be defined as a fluctuating approximation to its real counterpart, which is changing in an unpredictable manner all the time. In short, even though we would know the exact initial conditions, the actual system could be chaotic due to changes in the approximate system. In this sense, many physical systems have an inclination toward being chaotic.

Due to its maximum complexity, the universe is the largest chaotic system. Observable regular patterns in special parts of that system repeat themselves in time. While the rest of the flows are unpredictable, they are not totally irregular, abrupt, or disordered. Just like whirls in a flowing river, they are in a kind of free motion searching for convenient conditions in which to give birth to organized structures.

The future of chaos

Chaos gives today’s scientist a new worldview, for Newton’s concrete, cold, and deterministic one has been shaken by the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. No one ever thought that the Newtonian worldview could be replaced. However, now scientists are more likely to be open to chance and choice than their predecessors. The question is whether chaos theory will cause large revolutions in how we understand the universe. However, the existing excitement, expanding research and growing number of articles, and its numerous applications from economy to biology, seem to indicate that a surprise improvement might not be so far off. ‘

Footnotes

1. Fractal: A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry. Fractals are used especially in computer modeling of irregular patterns and structures in nature.
2. ‘Chaos and Fractals: Laplace’s Demon.’ Online at: www.pha.jhu.edu/ ldb/seminar/laplace.html.