Taking for granted our notional grasp of chaos theory and what underpins it, we were grateful to Quantum of Sollazzo for disabusing us with this thoroughgoing essay on the Butterfly Effect and its associations with mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. The kernel of the concept came to Lorenz one evening when he decided to repeat a computations of a weather forecast in order to see what was happening in greater detail, but missed some significant digits of the input due to the variable being cut off after the thousandths place—the original calculation used a more precise number. The output of the first and second run started out virtually identical but as time progressed began to deviate wildly with a very different end result. At first believing there to be a problem with the computer, Lorenz checked the maths and determined what he was observing—that the rounding errors were steadily amplifying until dominating the solution, a measurable equation for anecdotal philosophy and thought-problems of ripple effect. 
On his lecture circuit, Lorenz routine shared this story with his audience, eventually incorporating a remark from a colleague that one flap of a seagull’s wings could alter the course of weather forever, and speaking a decade later on the same topic of deterministic nonperiodic flow in 1972, co-presenters suggested to title his talk “Does a the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?,” prompting the scientist to replace his mascot with a more poetic one, also fitting neatly with Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” in which a time-traveller irrevocably alters the future by accidentally mashing a butterfly in the distant past. Those bounces double. There are limits to predictability, measurement and knowledge of initial conditions that cannot necessarily be unwound or rewound in the real world—and the verdict is still out on the veracity of the analogy, Lorenz actually proposing that “If a flap of a butterfly’s wing can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally be well instrumental in preventing one”—and whilst one cannot replay an event with changed parameters, the waft of a wing, the forensics of following the long-tail of a historic incident or accident can be as compelling, particularly with the privilege of hindsight and the view from a hundred storeys up. Several pivotal accounts of tracking down those connections, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet duty officer who averted World War III, are indexed to the attempt to model chaos.
synchronoptica
one year ago: Latin neologisms from the Vatican (with synchronoptica) plus the Japanese art of candy making
two years ago: Howard Hughes’ private streaming service plus Putin in Mongolia
three years ago: animator Jiลรญ Barta plus a banger from Survivor
four years ago: a visit to the Saalfeld Fairy Grotto
five years ago: Smooth Operator (1984), assorted links worth revisiting, Gumbasia (1955), the Quadripartite Agreement for post war Germany, another Watergate break-in, applied fungi plus thirty-plus years of Ukrainian independence
six years ago: war correspondent Marguerite Higgins Hall, a glimpse of the upcoming US election plus more links to enjoy
