Although this is what many may consider "pop physics", this passage describing an image of a flowing brook from the the book,
Sevel Lessons of Chaos: Spiritual Wisdom From The Science Of Change by John Briggs and F. David Peat, is what i was thinking in a roundabout way:
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The second image (re: the brook) shows the turbulence of a mountain stream. Here, apparent discorder masks an underlying pattern. Sit by this stream long enough and you begin to notice that is simultaneously stable and ever-changing. The water's turbulence generates complex shapes that are constantly renewed. So this stream is a metaphor for ourselves. Like the stream, our physical bodies are constantly being renewed and transformed as cells are regularly replaced. Meanwhile, that 'self" that we believe lies within the body at our psychological is also in flux. We are both the same person we were ten years ago and a substantially new person. But we can go further.
A little relflection reveals that the stream depicted here is inextricable from the other ecosystems to which it's connected - the myriad animals and plants that drink from its waters; the twigs, leaves, and seeds that litter the dimple and swirl of its surface; the ancient deposits of glaciers that alter its course; the climate and weather of the region; the season-making orbit of the planet through space. Similarly, each of us as an individual is inter-connect to the systems of nature, society, and thought that flow surround and flow through us. We live within movements constantly affecting each other and creating an unpredictable chaos at many levels. Yet within this same chaos is born all the physical and psychological order that we know.
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Perhaps I have my definition of determinism wrong. The way I define it is as a strict and rigid plan with many discrete steps towards a definite purpose coealescing in a and predetermined and finite end. Although I sense a force moving towards a definite purpose with rules, I also see many instances where chaos (call it free will) fills in the gaps and actually serves as a cosmic lubrication, so to speak. So although the cosmos is moving towards an end (or new beginning?), the steps it may take to get there cannot possibly be predetermined. Perhaps a good estimate may be made, however.