(ORDO NEWS) — In spatio-temporal philosophy and chaos theory, a term stands out, figuratively called the “butterfly effect”.
It denotes any unpredictable event that affects the further behavior of the system as a whole. For example, if you place a soccer ball on top of a hill, it will end up rolling down to one of many possible places.
This term is based on the idea:
The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in some place on the globe causes a current of air, which subsequently causes hurricanes elsewhere (obviously, the insect itself cannot literally control the weather).
Its wing is the beginning of the process, and its swing is the launch of an uncertain event leading to disaster.
The American mathematician Edward Lorenz (1917-2008) developed the concept of the “butterfly effect” while working on the theory of chaos and dynamical systems with unpredictable consequences.
Famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) popularized the concept with his 1952 short story “Thunder Came Down”.
This work also includes the laws of time travel : even a small change in the system in the past can drastically affect the future.
Lorentz, who worked at the meteorological center, calculated on a computer the probability of a certain weather at a given time.
While performing mathematical operations, he once mistakenly entered into the system only three decimal places instead of six – as a result, a completely different scenario came out.
A well-known example of the historical “butterfly effect”
For example, in 1905, a German student received two refusals from the Austrian Academy of Fine Arts. After living in Vienna, he decided to become a military man – and took part in the First World War.
It was that student that the future dictator and international criminal Adolf Hitler, who unleashed the horrific World War II, was.
With an emphasis on the “butterfly effect”, successful works of popular culture are based – books, films, computer games, comics, and so on.
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