From: Case (Case@iSpots.com)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 20:53:56 BST
[Matt wrote]
The chaos theory basically states that any random individual occurence can
have infinite effects.
> I.E. A warm breeze blows a bee near a hiker, who gets stung, trips,
> falls, and dies, and the search teams dont find the body which causes his
> wife to commit suicide, which is a turning point in her childs life where
> they decide to study intensively, and one day in a lab experiment at
> university forgets to turn the gas off, and causes a huge explosion at a
> university campus, which is never rebuilt , giving one of the professors
> time to think over an idea they've had, and working up a hunger for
> chinese food which he orders, but is never delivered because the driver
> hears his lottery ticket called on the radio on the way over, and gives
> the food to a young homeless person, who is so startled by the random
> gift, that it changes her view on life, and over the years, works her way
> back into society to become the leader of a political party that
> unexpectedly wins elections , and brings the party many successive
> successful elections that reform the policies of the entire country,
> altering the carbon-dioxide output of the populace, which alter the
> weather patterns ever so slightly, but are the direct cause of the worst
> typhoon in human history, killing hundreds of millions, which forces the
> entire world to reform, and unite to rebuild and recooperate (sp?) losses,
> and are the beginning of the end (for the large scale) wars that have
> plagued mankind since civilization started.
[Case repies]
That's it more or less although the example typically starts with a
butterfly not a bee. It is also known as "sensitive dependance on initial
conditions." Also note this quote offered up by Platt in a separate thread:
"Biological evolution can be seen as a process by which weak Dynamic forces
at a subatomic level discover stratagems for overcoming huge static
inorganic forces at a superatomic level. They do this by selecting
superatomic mechanisms in which a number of options are so evenly balanced
that a weak Dynamic force can tip the balance one way or another. The
particular atom that the weak Dynamic subatomic forces have seized as
their primary vehicle is carbon." (Lila, 11)
Basically when all of the normal causal factors are held in check, canceling
each other out, then small influences can have a big impact. Here is a site
that provides a nice introduction:
http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html. I think this speaks volumes about
such notions as predestination and Wheeler's many worlds hypothosis. For
several years now I have been toying with the idea that tradtional ideas
about cause and effect are really a special cases of Jungian synchonicity
(meaningful coincidence) where the probability of A following B is near
100%. I also think it suggests that our knowledge of the past is no more
certain than our conjectures about the future.
Much of what Pirsig says assumes evolutionary theory. In fact since
evolutionary theory is all about how static entities emerge from the dynamic
flux of their environment, I am surprised there has not been more discussion
here on the subject. In short I am still leery about putting too much stock
in the whole levels thing but if the four static levels are so important why
has not more attention given to the foundational levels of physics and
biology before jumping into abstract, untestable and unprovable speculations
about levels 3 and 4? It is in the areas of level 1 and 2 that I think
Pirsig is making a significant contribution.
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