Julio M. Ottino
Title:Beyond Newton's Shadow: Embracing complexity in the age of AI
Abstract:
It is hard, from the perspective of our times, to imagine the power that Newtonian ideas have had on the world -- a worldview characterized by perfect determinism, complete predictability, and direct causality. Its reach extended far beyond physics, permeating philosophy, economics, theology, business, and government. A succession of awe-inspiring revolutions took place since the advent of Newtonian mechanics: statistical and quantum mechanics, relativity, evolution, the DNA and computer revolutions, placing us now at the doorstep of the AI-age. But Newtonian thinking endures – the belief that outcomes can be predicted and managed with the right information and controls. Dislodging entrenched thinking is hard. The challenge, however, is not the lack of new ideas; it is the strength of the old ones. The world today requires thinking that moves us from a paradigm of linear causality to one of complex interconnectedness, to a reality that is inherently probabilistic rather than deterministic, one that requires comfort with emergence and seemingly contradictory perspectives. What does emerge from a synthesis of all post-Newtonian revolutions? Will the development of new tools extend current thinking or produce new thinking?
Bio:
Julio M. Ottino is an engineering scientist recognized for his work in fluid dynamics, chaos and nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, and especially mixing. He was born in La Plata, Argentina and grew up with twin interests in the physical sciences and visual arts. He obtained his first degree at the University of La Plata, in Argentina, before receiving a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is currently at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in Northwestern University where he holds the titles of Robert R. McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He is also a professor of Management and Organizations at Kellogg School of Management. Previously he held positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as well as chaired and senior appointments at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Minnesota. He was the co-founder and director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and the author of theKinematics of Mixing: Stretching, Chaos, and Transport (Cambridge University Press 1989) and The Nexus, Augmented Thinking for a Complex World, with Bruce Mau (MIT Press, 2022). He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
