Science and the Natural World: The Puzzle of Complex Nonlinear and Chaotic Phenomena

In Europe, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the developments of the Age of Enlightenment, that was centred on the principles of human reason and physical evidence. Superstitions were abandoned and were replaced by the scientific understanding of natural phenomena. The scientific revolution allowed extraordinary progresses and successfully described ‘simple’ phenomena governed by a single direct and linear cause-effect relationship which can be precisely and mathematically analysed. It recently displayed some limitations, when a large number of factors mutually interact in ‘complex’ systems, with mathematically nonlinear ‘chaotic’ interactions which cannot be successfully described or predicted. These aspects are overlooked when neurosciences and cognitive sciences attempt to describe human mind, as well as the sufferings that accompany human life. As a consequence, these approaches have been charged of being reductionist and mechanistic, in contrast to the humanistic and person-centred values of the psychologies with a psycho-dynamical orientation and of the Buddhist traditions.