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SOME SCIENTISTS SEE their work make headlines. But MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz watched his work become a catch phrase. Lorenz, who died in April, created one of the most beguiling and evocative notions ever to leap from the lab into popular culture: t
inspiration toread reference boston.globe culture chaos butterfly butterflyeffect research article science philosophy media ideas theory physics causes complexity pop effect maths
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Austin TThe meaning of the butterfly
Why pop culture loves the 'butterfly effect,' and gets it totally wrong -
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In 1990's "Havana," Robert Redford, a math-wise gambler, tells Lena Olin, "A butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean. They can even calculate the odds."
Such borrowings of Lorenz's idea might seem authoritative to unsuspecting viewers, but they share one major problem: They get his insight precisely backwards. The larger meaning of the butterfly effect is not that we can readily track such connections, but that we can't. To claim a butterfly's wings can cause a storm, after all, is to raise the question: How can we definitively say what caused any storm, if it could be something as slight as a butterfly? Lorenz's work gives us a fresh way to think about cause and effect, but does not offer easy answers.
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As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"
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The "innumerable" interconnections of nature, Lorenz noted, mean a butterfly's flap could cause a tornado - or, for all we know, could prevent one. Similarly, should we make even a tiny alteration to nature, "we shall never know what would have happened if we had not disturbed it," since subsequent changes are too complex and entangled to restore a previous state.
So a principal lesson of the butterfly effect is the opposite of Redford's line: It is extremely hard to calculate such things with certainty.
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When small imprecisions matter greatly, the world is radically unpredictable.
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Instead of a vision of science in which any prediction is possible, as long as we have enough information, Lorenz's work suggested that our ability to analyze and predict the workings of the world is inherently limited.
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It is probability, not certain cause and effect, that now dictates how scientists understand many systems, from subatomic particles to storms.
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People want to attach a specific cause to events, and can't accept the randomness of the world.
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