Introduction to Chaos.
Written by: Jamie Faith
Date: 04/03/01

What is chaos?
  Let me start by explaining it similar to how it was explained to me. The legendary 
swordfighter named Musashi live in Japan in the early 1600's at the begining of the 
Tokugawa Shogunate. Back then, the art of Kenjitsu (what we call "Fencing") was taken very 
seriously. Now, traditional Kenjitsu is the science of positioning the body and the sword 
using the geometry of skeletal arcs and the leverage of the sword to defend and to kill. 
Though Kenjitsu was a highly effective way of fighting, it was also very predictable; seeing 
that everything was based on logic and keeping ones equilibrium. Musashi exploited this by 
creating an approach sometimes known as "Drunken Samurai". He would often pivot, lean too 
far, reach too far, and nearly fall - he did this so often that his opponent didn't know where 
Musashi would be coming from or where his sword would end. He became an unstable, invinsible 
system - suprising everyone with his unorthodox style of fighting. Nowadays, we could describe 
this style of fighting using the math of Chaos Theory. You see, we know know that the world 
doesn't function like those classical fighting postures, but rather more of a Drunken 
Samurai style.

  Now, with that said - people sometimes mistake randomization with chaos. Which is 
technically incorrect. Now, some of you may be saying, "Come on, spare me the technicalities"; 
but ... here, this is how it goes. A good example of randomization would be too look at the 
"snow static" that you sometimes get when your sattellite TV wont catch - there would be no 
way to find a out how to predict every single pixel. Though chaos would be more like Roulette. 
The numbers which appear are random, though on the other hand we know the mechanics of the 
ball and the wheel very well and if we could somehow measure the initial conditions for the 
ball/wheel system, we might be able to make a short term prediction of the outcome.

  To make things short, Chaos is the unorthodox way the world works. Its complex to predict, 
though its possible with the technology of today's and tomorrow's world.


Who thought up chaos?
  The first true experimenter in chaos was a meteorologist, named Edward Lorenz. In 1960, he 
was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of 
twelve equations to model the weather. It didn't predict the weather itself. However this 
computer program did theoretically predict what the weather might be.

  One day in 1961, he wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in 
the middle of the sequence, instead of the beginning. He entered the number off his printout 
and left to let it run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved differently. 
Instead of the same pattern as before, it diverged from the pattern, ending up wildly different 
from the original. He later found that when he decided to alter his printouts; the original 
sequence number was .506127, and he had only used the first three digits, .506. Now, what had 
happened was the butterfly effect:

ButterFly Effect
  A good example of chaos is action is what we call the Butterfly Effect. When a single 
butterfly flaps its wings, it causes a slight change in the atmosphere around it. Now, in 
time - that single change could very well be the cause of an unexpected tornado in one part of 
the world and the reason why an expected tornado simply "didn't happen" in another.

DNA and the chaos theory
  Researchers discovered a simple set of three equations that graphed a fern. This started a 
new idea, perhaps DNA encodes not exactly where the leaves grow, but a formula that controls 
their distribution. DNA, even though it holds an amazing amount of data, could not hold all
of the data necessary to determine where every cell of the human body goes. However, by using 
fractal formulas to control how the blood vessels branch out and the nerve fibers get created, 
DNA has more than enough info. It has even been thought that the brain itself might be 
organized somehow according to the laws of chaos. 

More information is widely available on the internet, and your local college library. This is
just a brief introduction to a world where you learn to watch your actions.

Ciao,

- Jamie