ABSTRACT
Since the great work of Newton, the mechanical vision of the world has been the basis of our understanding. Even though sub-atomic and atomic physics were revolutionized by quantum physics, the mechanical vision remained paramount in our comprehension of events at the level of our everyday experience. This means that we explain things on the basis of ‘causal mechanisms’, where components influence each other and form systems, in which the change seen in one part is explained by change in another, or in the external environment in which the system is embedded. These mechanisms could be written down as mathematical equations, as mathematical models expressing fundamental laws of nature, and then used to predict behaviour. The paths traced by the system from any given initial state were pre-determined by the equations and therefore it was believed that surprise could only come from the outside.
