ABSTRACT
The classical sciences of the modern era, while displacing humanity as God's chosen children, at the same time empowered humans with a God-like hubris capable of recreating Eden on earth. Mechanistic, deterministic science gave people the ability to predict the outcome of mathematically described events through algebra, calculus, and linear differential equations. Mechanistic science, progress, and capitalism all draw power from the linear functions of mathematical equations—the upward and downward slopes of straight lines and curves. In the field of science, a revolutionary change could entail a paradigm shift toward new explanatory theories, such as the change from a geocentric Ptolemaic cosmos to a heliocentric Copernican universe. The appearance of chaos as an actor in science and history in the late twentieth century fundamentally destabilizes the concept of nature as a standard or referent. A postclassical, postmodern science is a science of limited knowledge, of the primacy of process over parts, and of imbedded contexts within complex, open, ecological systems.
