Chaos Theory: The Butterfly Effect

While we live our lives, we often wonder whether the things we do will impact the future; and sometimes, our actions end up for the better and other times, for the worse. This “little-cause big-effect” idea we have is what we call the butterfly effect. Like those speeches organizations give when trying to get you to donate money, the butterfly effect tells us that the things we do at the beginning, even the tiny ones, have an inexpressible impact in the world later in time. In fact, the butterfly effect lives up to its name pretty well. Its discovery lead to the popularization of the Chaos Theory, the loss of the true message from its discoverer, and a impact in the way weather is forecasted and the entertainment world. In this sense, the

butterfly effect is a butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is also part of a larger subject that deals with the science of , the Chaos Theory.
Chaos is the science of the unpredictable, and the inconsistent.

It tells us to expect the unexpected. Unlike the more “regular” and predictable science fields that are usually dealt with, such as chemical reactions, physics, and electricity, Chaos Theory deals with the unpredictable and the uncontrollable, like weather and brain activity. It includes: the butterfly effect, unpredictability, order/ disorder, mixing, feedback, and fractals. A benefits of understanding the chaos in the world is, for example, setting off a paper plane in the wind and being able drive it to the desired location. The main person credited for the Chaos Theory is Edward Norton Lorenz, however, Lorenz is really a person that made the Chaos Theory popular. In the 19th century, a mathematician by the name of Jules Henri Poincaré came up with a conclusion that small differences in initial condition can lead to gargantuan differences in the final product; and with this, “prediction becomes impossible”. This idea, however, didn’t become the next big thing, until about 70 years later, when a meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rediscovered

it.
One day in 1961, Edward Norton Lorenz was entering numbers into his computer to run a simulation of weather patterns; but instead of entering the whole number, he rounded the decimal and discovered that there was a drastic change in the weather pattern over the course of two months.

This lead Lorenz to come up with the idea of how nature works, that “small changes can have large consequences”. It is later deemed the title of the “butterfly effect” after Lorenz suggested that a flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. The butterfly effect is also known as “sensitive dependence on initial conditions, the same idea that Poincaré proposed. In 1963, Lorenz wrote a paper, Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow, which included the butterfly effect. His acumen resulted as the foundation principle of the Chaos Theory, “which expanded rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s into fields as diverse as meteorology, geology, and biology” (Pacaud et al.). However, as the message was passed down the line, some of it got lost, and now Lorenz’s message is only about half alive.
In 1972, at the 139th conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz presented his research, titled by meteorologist Philip Merilees Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?. At this conference, Lorenz talked about the butterfly effect and the sensitivity to initial conditions, but there was another part as

well.
“More generally, I am proposing that over the years minuscule disturbances neither increase nor decrease the frequency of occurrence of various weather events such as tornados; the most they may do is to modify the sequence in which these events occur.”
In other words, Lorenz is announcing that over the years, tiny disturbances won’t have an effect on the increase or decrease on the occurrence of a major weather event, like tornados; and the most that, say, a butterfly could do is change the order the weather comes in. And in reality, no matter how hard a butterfly flaps its wings, it can’t whip up a storm. Although reality gives us a hard push back, it doesn’t mean that we never see the effects of the butterfly effect.
Thanks to Lorenz, there were many improvements in weather forecasting. Lorenz took credit to a wider data collection, better modeling, and “the recognition of chaos” in the weather; as a result this led to something called ensemble forecasting. What happens here is that meteorologists recognize that the numbers aren’t perfect, so they run multiple simulation from slightly varied conditions. The features that the different simulations share form a more reliable forecast. The butterfly effect also found its way into the entertainment world. Nowadays, many movies and books are based around the butterfly effect. Movies about time travel and the consequences of time travel, like The Butterfly Effect, Project Almanac, Back to the Future, are examples of the butterfly effect.
In conclusion, the butterfly effect has a very noticeable imprint on the world, it’s just that sometimes it’s unclear. The butterfly effect not only brought an idea, that was in a coma for about 70 years, back to life, it also got so popular that the original purpose was lost, and not to mention the advancements in weather prediction and a little extra in our off times. The butterfly effect is the reason that we are able to know whether to bring an umbrella to school or not, it’s the reason why kids are encouraged to go out into the world and do incredible things, it’s also the reason we look forward to real hoverboards. Sometimes, though, the things we do can get out of hand and result in catastrophic ways, like when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the result was World War 1 with over 38 million casualties. While the good can happen, it is also necessary to acknowledge the bad. The butterfly effect is like falling dominoes, once it starts, it’s hard to stop; and like the dominoes, the butterfly effect started something monumental.