Article October 29, 2018 Issue

Challenge chaos and unpredictability

Elizabeth Beall

Have you ever wondered why we hear the word chaos mentioned so often these days? The first time this word grabbed my attention was about a decade ago while I was finishing my postgraduate studies. A professor stated at the end of my last course that the historic quest for truth by the world’s philosophers is now over, because they have found that there is no truth, and all that’s left is chaos theory.

Chaos theory deals with unpredictability. Some dictionaries define chaos as complete disorder and confusion. But isn’t there a higher intelligence of the universe that governs in an orderly manner?

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Few deny the hypothesis that intelligence, apart from man and matter, governs the universe; and it is generally admitted that this intelligence is the eternal Mind or divine Principle, Love” (p. 270). But she also says, in the same book, “The question, ‘What is Truth,’ convulses the world” (p. 223).