Sometimes things happen that bring into memory something from the past. This past weekend I was reminded of a lesson on chaos from a college class years ago. The professor of that class made the statement, "chaos is essential to the universe".
He defined chaos as "a property of some non-linear dynamic systems which exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that there are initial states which evolve within some finite time to states whose separation in one or more dimensions of state space depends, in an average sense, exponentially on their initial separation. Such systems may still be completely deterministic in that any future state of the system depends only on the initial conditions and the equations describing the change of the system with time. It may, however, require arbitrarily high precision to actually calculate a future state to within some finite precision."
Well the redneck version of that is ... chaos is the power that forces an unpredictable outcome to a predictable set of circumstances.
He went on to use the equation of time (T) multiplied by speed (S) will equal distance (D) as proof that we have a predictable outcome. (T x S = D) But if you figure in the blowout of a tire (which would be chaos) then the distance was unpredictable. Further examples of volcanoes, tsunamis and hurricanes were also used as forces of chaos.
Hey the man was a genius!
He then went on to explain that even with chaos, events were somewhat predictable unless another chaotic event happened. (I'm getting lost by this time and probably you are too, but bear with me.) A tsunami's effect is fairly predictable if there is no other chaotic event such as a hurricane, volcano or other event happening at the same time.
You are probably asking "how does that figure into this blog?"
Well let's start with the equation pappy (P) times grandkids (GK) equals a chest swollen with pride (SC). This is as you can see a very predictable outcome. (P x GK = SC)
HOWEVER if you enter in the chaos of "screaming at the top of your lungs" and "running throughout the house at breakneck speed" then the outcome equals pappy blowing his stack! (Very similar here to a volcano erupting to relieve pressure within the earths crust.)
Now back to last weekend, after the Warden's birthday dinner, we had adjourned to the daughters house for cake and ice cream. The grandkids were indeed totally experiencing the moment with shrills of joy, over turned chairs, running top speed throughout the house and pappy was on the brink of erupting. Then in a flash, in the utter chaos, one of the little toots begin scratching and clawing his way into my lap. He looked up with those big eyes, smiling widely and said, "How ya doing Pappy?"
Yes, I have to agree .... chaos is essential to the universe.
Dennis
