An Idea-The Butterfly Effect

On a winter day, in early 1960 Edward Lorenz, professor of meteorology at MIT, entered some numbers into a computer system simulating weather patterns. He then left his office for some time, while the machine kept working, when he returned he noticed a result that would change the course of science.

Here is a simple description of what happened. The computer system was based on 12 variables, including temperature and wind speed. He was basically repeating a simulation he did earlier except that he rounded off one variable from 0.506127 to 0.506. This tiny observation which is usually ignored by the masses, dramatically transformed the whole pattern his programme produced for the following couple of months.

This event led Larenz to give the concept of ‘The butterfly effect’. He suggested that even something as innocent as the flap of a butterflies wings can ultimately cause a tornado.

It is possible that the flap of a butterfly’s wings will ultimately result in a disaster in a geographically far distanct place,say, United States. Well,yes it is possible.

In 1963, Lorenz published his insight into a paper “Deterministic non-periodic flow”.His insight turned out to be the founding principle of the chaos theory, which expanded rapidly into fields like meteorology, geology and even Biology.

“It became a powerful instance of a seemingly esoteric piece of mathematics that had experimentally verifiable applications is the world.”- Daniel Rothman, MIT.

The butterfly effect also has a profound Corollary, “forecasting the future can be nearly impossible”,which challenged the work of French mathematician Pierre-Simon, who stated in his paper, “A philosophical essay on probability that if we knew everything about this universe in it's current state, Then “nothing would be uncertain about the future, as the past would be present to (our) eyes.”

This effect is not only applicable on weather, but every single event or outcome to have ever occurred.It clearly points to the fact that every single event in reality is the result of a past action.

Take a look at your life. Have you ever noticed how thoughts and opinions of different people are impacting your life? Did you ever tell someone how grateful you are as they were part of your journey? Have you ever tried cutting people out of your life who are causing downfall?

Because sometimes one small action taken by us could cause either disastrous or miraculous outcome on our lives.