Edward Lorenz, Father of the Butterfly Effect, (1917-2008)

Edward Lorenz, considered one of founders of chaos theory, died on Wednesday. Posting on my little blog here could never do such a great mind justice but he was the first scientist/mathematician that I truly appreciated I just wanted to say a few words about him.

Lorenz may not be a household name but I knew about him when I was a kid. I read his book The Essence of Chaos and became intensely interested in chaos theory. Lorenz started his academic career with a strong interest in understanding weather after he worked as a forecaster for the US Army in WWII. In that time he no doubt became aware of the importance of meteorology and later developed a model for air movement in the atmosphere as his phD research at MIT. In his book he says that "in many respects, planning ahead without the vicissitudes of chaotic behavior would be a much simpler process. The greater difficulty in planning things in the real world, and the occasional disastrous effects of hurricanes and other storms, must therefore be attributed to chaos." While developing his model, in 1963 Lorenz derived the convection equations which became the basis for the Lorenz attractor (seen on above). From wikipedia, the Lorenz attractor is a "3-dimensional structure corresponding to the long-term behavior of a chaotic flow, noted for its butterfly shape. The map shows how the state of a dynamical system (the three variables of a three-dimensional system) evolves over time in a complex, non-repeating pattern."

In his models, Lorenz noticed that small changes in the initial or existing conditions could lead to dramatically different outcomes. Another way to say this is that simple systems can lead to complex behavior such that small changes in those systems will lead to equally complex but vastly different behavior. This concept is a key part of the "essence" of Chaos Theory and was coined the "Butterfly Effect" after a talk he gave on December 29th, 1972 titled: "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?" In the conclusion of that talk Lorenz states "today's errors in weather forecasting cannot be blamed entirely nor even primarily upon the finer structure of the weather patterns. They arise mainly from our failure to observe even the coarser structure with near completeness, our somewhat incomplete knowledge of the governing physical principles, and the inevitable approximations which must be introduced in formulating these principles as procedures which the human brain or the computer can carry out."

I run the risk of going off on a tangent here, but I think it was this attitude of Lorenz's that shaped much of my early views on science and philosophy. I'm talking about the idea that the extremely complex world around us can be explained by some simple and elegant physical laws. More specifically, Lorenz's deterministic chaos seems to suggest that the existence and complexity of life can ultimately be the result of a few basic laws. I could write for days about this so will just cut to the chase here. We humans like to think that the world is non-deterministic, in other words, that we have free will. The ability to control our destiny. We like to think that there is something fundamentally different about our brains than the deterministic nature of physics. Given the initial velocity and mass of some object you throw into the sky we can calculate how high it goes and where it will land. Maybe we find that we are off by a little, so we take into account air resistance. That pretty much does it but not quite, so we account for the gravitational attraction of the moon. Maybe if we can be precise enough, relativity and quantum mechanics become important. The fact is, that the object's future is determined by it's initial conditions. Is your future determined too? Why shouldn't it be if we live in the same world as the object? This is where people with faith in god will take a deep breathe and not worry so much. For the rest of us it might become something of a philosophical dilemma, something that will keep you up at night.

I really don't want to lose focus here so let me just say where I stand on this issue and how it relates to our good friend Lorenz. Since I was a kid (around the time I read Lorenz's book) I have felt that free will was an illusion because I firmly believe that the world makes sense and is governed by the absolute laws of physics. Our inability to predict the future of complex systems stems from either our inadequate understanding of those laws of physics or our incomplete knowledge of the "initial conditions," mostly the latter. The human mind and the interaction between humans and their environment represents the ultimate in complexity, its got to be top ten in the universe. So I have to say with sincerity and objectivity that the universe is ultimately deterministic and that includes humans. However, the beauty of life is that we have evolved over such a long time that we now have something called consciousness, self awareness and the illusion of free will. We have these qualities because they have been selected for over millions of years, they help us stay alive so we can pro-create. Now, subjectively as I live my life and am one of these humans, trying to live and be happy. I'm not going to let the deterministic quality of the universe stop me from going out there and getting whats mine, deciding my future and enjoying life! I think its important for every scientist to be objective when doing science and subjective when living their life. Edward Lorentz told me about deterministic chaos and I think thats the world we live in. If that doesn't turn you on then you are reading the wrong blog!

Edward was a scientist at heart and he won many awards over the years, which I won't detail here other than the Kyoto Prize in 1991. In deliverance of the award, the Kyoto Prize committee said that Lorenz won "for establishing "the theoretical basis of weather and climate predictability, as well as the basis for computer-aided atmospheric physics and meteorology." The committee added that Professor Lorenz "made his boldest scientific achievement in discovering 'deterministic chaos,' a principle which has profoundly influenced a
wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton." His ideas about chaos theory had far reaching implications in many areas of science, and in in my opinion, philosophy. In his later years he was apparently still very active in the scientific community as a professor at MIT. According to his daughter, he finished writing a paper with a colleague just a week before his death.

Well, thats all I really have to say about him which is nowhere near the honor and respect that he deserves. Hopefully there will be a few people that find out about such a cool guy through this blog that otherwise wouldn't have known of him. I highly recommend his book, which was linked to at the top. Its only $10 on amazon so check that out if you think you might be interested in this stuff. In conclusion, I want to play a song that is near and dear to me in his honor. My love of this band developed in part due to my feeling that phish really tapped into the essence of life and found harmony in the midst of chaos. Just ignore the visuals, its about the music and beauty of deterministic chaos. Anyways, Edward, you were one awesome dude.