Chaos Theory and You

By Robert Ringer

A friend recently sent me one of his favorite books, Chaos, by James Gleick. To say it's a difficult read is a bit of an understatement. I'm about a third of the way through it, and I think I've understood about three sentences. I exaggerate ... make that two.

Nevertheless, the book has my gray matter acting up again. Oversimplified, chaos theory is about the underlying chaos that exists in seemingly orderly systems. The so-called butterfly effect comes into play here, because a small change in initial conditions can dramatically change the long-term behavior of a "system." A system, of course, can be just about anything — the weather, a mathematical formula, a sporting event, even a student's school career.

Of course, the ultimate chaos-versus-order showcase is the universe itself. A majority of scientists believe that the universe began about 14 billion years ago with the unleashing of the so-called Big Bang. That's serious chaos. But what's puzzling to many of them is that the formation of the substantive universe may not be as random as once thought. For example, there appear to be precise patterns (i.e., order) to the galaxies.

Perhaps the rings of Saturn are the best cosmic example for us Earthlings to study when it comes to chaos versus order. When you look at a photo of Saturn, its rings are so smooth that they appear to have been painted by an artist.

Yet, at the local level, randomness and disorder prevail in the rings, with billions of small particles of ice, mixed with dust and other chemicals, circling the planet in their own orbits. They range in size from microns to meters. In fact, on closer inspection, gaps can be found in the rings, and there are even two moons embedded in them.

So, in the case of the rings of Saturn, what appears to be perfect order from a distance is actually quite chaotic. What we see at a distance are patterns in the form of smooth, concentric rings, but this is a deception caused by distance.

The same is true here on Earth. No matter how orderly something may appear to be, there is always chaos at the local level. For example, a brick wall looks calm and steady, but on a micro level, there is disorder. Neutrons and protons are circling the nucleus of every atom in every brick, and the atoms themselves are vibrating wildly.

On a macro level, man has harnessed the energy of those atoms by rearranging them first into bricks and then into a brick wall. And now that I think about it, that's pretty much what man does for a living; i.e., he brings order from chaos by rearranging atoms. Will Durant defined human progress as "increasing control of the environment by life ... the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form or will."

So, it appears that man's purpose — at least his nonspiritual purpose — is to bring order from chaos. We've done a pretty good job of this over the past 8,000 years or so, but we should never forget that underlying our best-laid plans is utter chaos.

Seismic turmoil abounds below our orderly skyscrapers. The next Katrina lies quietly in wait to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting city. Transmutating killer viruses, invisible to the naked eye, are ready to thrust the next HIV into our lives.

We organize governments to bring order to society, but, underneath it all, what we really want is to be free of government. Human beings are anarchists at heart. They don't like to be told what to do and when to do it. Chaos is always roiling beneath society's surface.

In reality, what seems to be chaos is also order ... and vice versa. As chaos theory tries to explain, what we think of as order ... as perfection ... as absolute ... is really just patterns. We look for patterns in sports, in the stock market, in business cycles.

Where we invite problems into our lives is by believing that patterns are the permanent order of things. While striving to bring order to your environment, you should be careful not to deceive yourself. Murphy's Law guarantees that chaos is always just around the next bend. The wise person lives his life accordingly.

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