ABSTRACT
The World sciences are organized research procedures undertaken on a regular, routine basis in large-scale organizations by teams of professionals under managerial direction. These groups carry out methodical investigations on prescribed projects, usually those of economic, social or military benefit. Physics is the original Big Science and the model for all the others. The transformation of physics is paradigmatic for science as a whole. The crucial development in dealing with complexity was the invention and continued perfection of the computer, which Pagels calls "the primary research instrument of the sciences of complexity." The chapter outlines two developments in mathematics and the empirical sciences which would be impossible and perhaps even unthinkable without the computer: fractal geometry and chaos theory. Both fractal geometry and chaos theory make use of the computer as an instrument of representation to such an extent that they have been given the designation "experimental mathematics".
