Comments on: Edward Lorenz, father of Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect, has died.

By: Boris

Boris — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:40:08 +0000

“I’ll take organised patterns of chaos over the chaotic organisations of man, any day.”-Patterns (SOAD)

By: Analiese

Analiese — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:38:38 +0000

Let’s just hope that the professor’s passing had nothing to do with his reading of today’s “The George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown” calendar page, which reads:”You’re free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it will take time to restore chaos and order – order out of chaos. But we will.” (GW,April 2003)

By: Jonathan Vos Post

Jonathan Vos Post — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:36:10 +0000

The academic paper that Edward Lorenz presented in 1972 entitled: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” has the same poetic genius (the double Alliteration of Butterfly/Brazil and Tornado/Texas in an already dramatic metaphor) as did so many of the writings and sayings (“Black Hole”, “mass without mass”, “Space tells mass how to move” while “mass tells space how to curve”)of John Archibald Wheeler, who died earlier this week, was also an MIT celebrity, and also founded a science (geometrodynamics).One of my frequent co-authors (Prof. Philip V. Fellman) tells his doctoral students and postdocs that the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century were Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Computability, and Chaos Theory.

By: Virgil Samms

Virgil Samms — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:02:46 +0000

These observations ultimately led him to formulate what became known as the butterfly effect–a term that grew out of an academic paper he presented in 1972 entitled: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

Oh yeah, I recall they made a muscial about that, “My Damn Butterfly.”