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| Titel |
HESS Opinions "A random walk on water" |
| VerfasserIn |
D. Koutsoyiannis |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1027-5606
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ; 14, no. 3 ; Nr. 14, no. 3 (2010-03-25), S.585-601 |
| Datensatznummer |
250012231
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/hess-14-585-2010.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| According to the traditional notion of randomness and uncertainty, natural
phenomena are separated into two mutually exclusive components, random (or
stochastic) and deterministic. Within this dichotomous logic, the
deterministic part supposedly represents cause-effect relationships and,
thus, is physics and science (the "good"), whereas randomness has little
relationship with science and no relationship with understanding (the
"evil"). Here I argue that such views should be reconsidered by admitting
that uncertainty is an intrinsic property of nature, that causality implies
dependence of natural processes in time, thus suggesting predictability, but
even the tiniest uncertainty (e.g. in initial conditions) may result in
unpredictability after a certain time horizon. On these premises it is
possible to shape a consistent stochastic representation of natural
processes, in which predictability (suggested by deterministic laws) and
unpredictability (randomness) coexist and are not separable or additive
components. Deciding which of the two dominates is simply a matter of
specifying the time horizon and scale of the prediction. Long horizons of
prediction are inevitably associated with high uncertainty, whose
quantification relies on the long-term stochastic properties of the
processes. |
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