TIME AND CHAOS

Abstract

The paper considers a ratio between chaos and time. It is shown that the epistemological relation of time and chaos in scientific cognition is connected with uncertainty and unpredictability of future states. This link does not exist in classical dynamics, because the future is fully determined by the equations of motion. It is supported by the existence of static and deterministic chaos in statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, and in the theory of relativity it is resulted from ambiguity of the past and the future. It is assumed that the irreversibility of time should be not an ontological, but epistemological feature of time connected with the features of human cognition and reflecting the irreversibility of thermodynamic and the instability of nonlinear processes. The idea of ‘nonlinear arrow of time’ is introduced.