We show techniques of analyzing complex dynamics of cellular automata (CA) with chaotic behavior. CA are well-known computational substrates for studying emergent collective behavior, complexity, randomness and interaction between order and chaotic systems. A number of attempts have been made to classify CA functions on their space-time dynamics and to predict the behavior of any given function. Examples include mechanical computation, λ and Z-parameters, mean field theory, differential equations and number conserving features. We aim to classify CA based on their behavior when they act in a historical mode, i.e. as CA with memory. We demonstrate that cell-state transition rules enriched with memory quickly transform a chaotic system converging to a complex global behavior from almost any initial condition. Thus, just in few steps we can select chaotic rules without exhaustive computational experiments or recurring to additional parameters. We provide an analysis of well-known chaotic functions in one-dimensional CA, and decompose dynamics of the automata using majority memory exploring glider dynamics and reactions.

Since their inception at Macy conferences in later 1940s, complex systems have remained the most controversial topic of interdisciplinary sciences. The term "complex system" is the most vague and liberally used scientific term. Using elementary cellular automata (ECA), and exploiting the CA classification, we demonstrate elusiveness of "complexity" by shifting space-time dynamics of the automata from simple to complex by enriching cells with memory. This way, we can transform any ECA class to another ECA class — without changing skeleton of cell-state transition function — and vice versa by just selecting a right kind of memory. A systematic analysis displays that memory helps "discover" hidden information and behavior on trivial — uniform, periodic, and nontrivial — chaotic, complex — dynamical systems.