One of the most elegant, but mathematically and explicably complex phenomenon in nature, which alters the course of our lives starting at the most naive aspects, and finding roots in the most substantial happenings, is the essence of what science now calls "Chaos". It is responsible for the unexplained changes brought into our perception ranging from our observing the complex geometry of nature, topography or snowflakes to more intangible equivalents like
public behaviour, emotions and changes in personality itself.
Chaos theory is a relatively new science which deals with the chaotic changes brought to a system by minor factors which prevelant scientific methods usually neglected in their inconceivable potency. It started off as an explanation to the failure of accurate weather prediction even when aided by the most powerful computational facilites. The famous butterfly effect, which in popular culture has found tremendous fame owing to movies, sitcoms and books citing its nuances, and often using the same as the main plot, was the basis of the "Chaotic" interference in weather, which stated that a butterflies flapping of wings can trigger changes in weather which magnify over time (not neccessarily long though) to completely change its initial course. Now you possibly cannot know the exact pattern of flapping of wings of all butterflies over the face of earth, and hence, cannot know how the weather will exactly turn out to be. All we can do, is approximate.
Having only read and thought about chaos theory a lot, I indulged myself in a self proposed experiment, in my first year of engineering. The pair of jeans I used to wear the most, I also had to fold the bottom of. So I carefully measured the length of the folds, increasing that of the left leg a centimeter more than the right's. (This was my slight change in the initial conditions, often the premise of chaotic events) My logic was that since the way both ends of the jeans would be moving will be approximately the same, also both going over the same terrain at the same velocity, to name a few, the initial change I made would be the pivotal factor governing the changes (if any) brought to the jeans. After a span of 2 months, the result was glaring at me in a stark realisation of the theories authenticity, and immense pleasure at having carrying out an explanatory experiment firsthand. The left leg of my (favorite) pair of jeans lay in a furiously frayed sartorial equivalent of a car crash. The right, although, was only slightly torn. The slight variation in parameters had rendered my jeans totally unwearable, atleast, a half of it. There were indeed a lot of other disturbances too, but notwithstanding, I was hooked into the
essence of chaos itself.
Coming to Chaos in our lives, it is an insurmountable adversary when it comes to predicting the course of events. And talking about the most intangible of its manifests, behaviour, and how a certain aspect of a relation may end up being, is totally unpredictable. These are also entities we cannot quantify using the arsenal of scientific procedures we currently have. So, how a person will behave regarding certain things is not only their personal choice, which may be discernible after a prolonged analysis of his behaviour, but is also effected by chaos. Slight changes in the course of action end up altering things to an extent of randomness. Like your saying "Im sure my relation with (Say) Alpha (Using the letter X for a person is not exactly my idea of exemplifying. Alpha sounds more of a name anyday, and yeah, its ALSO a letter * winks * ) will turn out to be exactly like * whatever it is you feel *." Now the very minute changes in your individual behaviours inevitably ends up changing the initial assumption to an extent where it is embarassingly different than what you thought it would be. The safest bet is hence not to be too sure of things. On a slightly unrelated topic, even G.F.B Reimann, the man behind the proposition of the dead famous Reimann Hypothesis actually said "Sehr warscheinlich" (meaning "most likely") regarding the occurence of the roots of the Reimann zeta function on the critical line, when it may actually be true, and hence awaited impatiently. This may not have to deal with chaos in any percievable manner (see this statement too keeps in mind any unlikely possibility), but it is just an example that surity is not as complacent amidst a vortex of uncertainity.
From the unpredictable motion of a simple double pendulum, to mapping random walks of people leading to fractals, to the abrupt change in behaviour of a person whom you thought you knew like the back of your hand, to stellar clusters of irregular pattern at first sight, chaos is an underlying initiator. What I do is to keep a blurred but definite objective for everyday activities in life, rather than a vividly detailed image of how to proceed to that objective, for the minor variations happening around me are totally beyond my involuntarily obtuse perception, let alone control, so how they'l effect the details of my initial plan, I cannot predict. The objective may be as simple as buying a few items from the store, visiting the ATM, collecting a reciept and recieving the clothes from the laundry. Now if I formulate a specific order in which I complete those tasks, in a normal day, I may be able to do it, but it will invariably lead to a day when everything goes wrong and I ask deaf heavens above "Why me?". The ATM may be crowded when I chose to reach, the bank official on a callously prolonged lunch break, the laundry still not done and the store out of stock. This would also effect my other nested plans to the initial one,
hence spoiling a later big picture. My ethereal surity that a close friend will always behave the same way, is bound to a mortal wound over time because there may be seemingly indifferent changes in the way we express to each other, our being possessive in some minor way, disliking and objecting to the most mundane traits, habits or likings, can eventually accumulate to so immense a difference in the outcome of the relation that we succumb to emotionally conjured pillars of disloyalty, mistrust, betrayal or mood swings of an obtuse order. Chaos is an undeniable aspect of governing offices, regardless of what you chose to observe. It would only be foolish, therefore, to ignore its effects.
"Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?"
- Richard P. Feynman
