Readers Write In #629: The feather that broke the cart

By G Waugh

The first time I had heard the word Chaos was in Kamal Haasan’s most disappointing film Dasavatharam,

“The fluttering of the wings of a butterfly here in India could trigger an earthquake in the remote corners of even the African continent”.

That was back in 2008.

I recently in 2022 had the opportunity to read a book titled Chaos: Making of a New Science by James Gleick. Frankly I had started off with a lot of skepticism about the topic which was founded on the limits to my generally dull understanding of scientific concepts.

The first thing that kept me hooked to the book was Gleick’s humble request for experts of all fields as diverse as the law, physics, economics, biochemistry, genetics, space, etc to sit together and share their insights on their respective spheres so that they can work towards understanding what is essentially called ‘the big picture’. Most of the disciplines in professional as well as academic spheres irrespective of how diverse and esoteric each one of them might sound, are at the end of the day integral parts of a gargantuan attempt by mankind to understand, theorize and improve what is either ‘Nature’ or ‘Society’ or both. What was interesting to me was Gleick’s eagerness to see people of different specializations to combine, collaborate and explore ‘the big picture’, something that doesn’t happen too often in real time. What business could an economist have trying to understand the nitty-gritty of the daily activities of say, a meteorologist? Why should a botanist try to reach out to someone as alien to him as a researcher on cardiology?

James Gleick tries in so many neatly layered chapters to prove that there is of course something mysteriously hidden amid the din and tedium of all these mind-bogglingly super-specialized scientific fields which could probably be Man’s ultimate Holy Grail- one law or one principle that governs all the innumerable forces of nature and society. He calls it Chaos and invites us to dip our toes into what could be one of the newest and the most excitingly original fields in science on Earth.

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‘Boyle’s law is a gas law which states that the pressure exerted by a gas (of a given mass, kept at a constant temperature) is inversely proportional to the volume occupied by it. In other words, the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional to each other as long as the temperature and the quantity of gas are kept constant.’

We all have learnt laws in physics like the above and many of them if we remember correctly are grand but original generalizations of nature’s phenomena which have helped us gain extraordinary insights into the properties of nature’s manifold manifestations. But unfortunately,what we missed or were asked to consciously ignore were the limits beyond which these laws couldn’t have actually held good – in the above postulate of Boyle’s law, we are asked to keep temperature constant as a precondition. If the temperature varied, the law would have perhaps broken down.

Similarly, during our laboratory classes on Physics in school we were asked to take three or more readings for an experiment to test the validity of a given law. The reason given to us was there could be errors or ‘noise’ in the instrument and hence taking multiple readings and calculating their arithmetic mean was the only way we could verify the postulates of that particular scientific principle.

But here is where Gleick comes in. He reminds us that none of the instruments made by man to measure physical properties could ever be perfect- there would always be no matter how many times you repeat that experiment what is ignored as ‘noise’- and hence he poses the question – ‘why don’t you take that goddamn‘noise’ into account as well?’.

Apparently, this might sound very unusual and in fact a completely purposeless exercise. Why should I consider something that is too trivial and which on the other hand is trying to wreck the normal, smooth functioning of my measuring device?Similarly,to measure the weather on a particular day there might be plenty of both the most important and least important variables that directly influence itbut Gleick wants us to consider every single one of them without discrimination or snobbish fastidiousness.

The reason for this Gleick says, is that the persistent appearance of these too-often ignored variables or hidden factors no matter how trivial their combined effect is currently on the phenomena under study, over a period of time shall produce results that are totally unexpected or unimaginably dramaticto the point of even totally distorting the phenomena under study. In other words, something as trivial as the fluttering of a butterfly wing could directly after a point of time lead to the development of fault lines along the tectonic plates underlyingan African landmass!

This is what Gleick refers to as Chaos which he elaborates as relatively negligible disturbances or ‘disorder’ whose persistence might after a point – a threshold- completely wreck or alter the equilibrium of a particular system beyond recognition. Once that point is reached, the system no longer behaves on ‘scientifically expected’ lines and from that point on, ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’ reigns which to everyone’s surprise, has its own patterns and rules and conditions.

The disturbances arising in the telephone lines of a European country, the ups and downs in the prices of onions over half a century in another country and sometimes even the patterns of heartbeat in a man under observation – all three of which no matter how divergent these occurrences appear to be, had according to observations made by Gleick, stunning patterns of similarity obedient to the new so-called laws of Chaos.

Gleick asks us to pore over these statistics especially where a particular phenomenon no longer obeys the laws of conventional wisdom. These apparently disordered variations might not appear to have a pattern at first but it is only a matter of adjusting and readjusting your timescale- either zoom in or zoom out- you shall Gleick promises, soon find out stunning patterns and perfect designs that neatly fit into the rules of Chaos, staring right at you.

Gleick surprises us with some examples of scientifically proven observations of the theory of Chaos –the distribution of veinsin a leaf which appear to be so disordered at first but which throws at us fantastic patterns only afterwe try to zoom in.Surprisingly,we see ‘fractal’ patterns in so randomly interconnected blood vessels and capillaries in human bodieswhich are in principle ‘chaotically’ veryidentical to what we saw in plant leaves.

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Pour a jug of water into a stainless-steel vessel. Increase the temperature by one degree centigrade. The water doesn’t show signs of any trouble. Keep increasing the temperature every minute only by half a degree. The water for most part doesn’t show much disturbances. The variations in temperature initially don’t make much of a difference but after a point, the water begins to slowly bubble and shows signs of turning into steam. Keep repeating the exercise. Till you reach its boiling point, the water as you see, despite disturbances and turbulences still remains as water. At hundred degree centigrade or more, the water starts turning into something for the first time which cannot be still described as water. The water has by this time turned into steam whose physical properties are completely different from that of what birthed it.

This is just one part of what Marx and Engels described as Dialectical Materialism almost one and half centuries ago. The emergence of a condition that initially seems to be trivial and immaterial (heat) but that which tries hard to change the system (water in the vessel), the persistence of the same for over a period and the tendency of the system to return to its equilibrium (water remains water despite heat) giving an impression of apparent calm, the slow transformation of the system towards something else(bubbling of water) despite the system’s resilient attempts to return to its old state and finally the system’s reaching of a point of no return beyond which it completely transforms into something else whose properties are wholly different from those of its predecessor (water turning into steam) – these are the essentials of the philosophy calleddialectical materialismwhere small, persistent and‘quantitative’ changes in an environment or an organism or a physical system could after a point of time lead to a completely different and an essentially unmissable ‘qualitative’change.

Marx studied the history of the Earth, the evolution of organisms, the transformation of human societies through steps spanning tribalism, slavery, serfdom, feudalism and capitalism and finally arrived at this theory of Dialectical materialism. He believed in the interaction of opposites (dialectics involving forces of progress and reaction pulling society in two opposite directions) and the transformation of quantity into quality after the reaching of a point of no-return to exist in almost all the aforementioned processes.

Darwin’s theory of evolution also called the theory of natural selection essentially addresses the interaction between forces tending organisms towards heredity and preservation of status quo and those pushing organisms towards genetic variation. Organisms that don’t change with changed circumstances compete for the same resourcesagainst organisms possessing favourable genetic mutations that help them to survive the change. The contest is hence dialectical and after a period of intense contest, the one that has adapted better to the conditions than the other survives to see the light of the day and pass its genes to the forthcoming generations.

Stephen Jay Gould, one of America’s greatest original thinkers came up with the term ‘punctuated equilibria’ to describe the process of evolution of species. While studying fossil records, he finds that the process of evolution of most species have testified to the processes described by Darwin but Gould adds one more fundamentally new idea. He says that for the most part of the history of evolution of organisms, an apparent equilibrium is conspicuous- there are no sudden emergence and development of new species for a very long period of time and the species that have hitherto ruled the Earth for so long continue to predominate. But soon a point in time emerges where a sudden burst of new species is observed and the old ones which fail to compete with the new ones on account of changed circumstances slowly start dying or become extinct. In other words, periods of apparent calm or equilibria are ‘punctuated’ with sudden explosions of new life and fossil records seem to validate this hypothesis. Gould also goes on to add that the period of apparent calm or equilibria were not essentially periods where competition between species did not exist but actually rather quite the opposite. There seems to have been a continuous undercurrent of tension (negligible and incapable of disturbing the equilibrium) during these periods between species that weren’t able to adapt genetically to the changing environment and those which had managed to accumulate favourable variations. The tension should have continued for so long a period and only at a particular threshold, the tensions should have burst forth and have allowed the emergence of completely new species that have managed to outcompete the older ones.

Stephen Jay Gould acknowledges in some of his writings his debt to the philosophy of dialectical materialism fathered by Marx and Engels in the formation of his theory of ‘punctuated equilibria’.

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In Mani Ratnam’s Nayagan, Velu Nayakar manages to eliminate all his enemies and emerge as the most powerful don in all of Mumbai. Towards the climax, he even manages to dodge the long arm of the law. Just when we think that all his nemeses have met their respective ends, a sudden, minor, hitherto forgotten and trivial disturbance raises his ugly head. The son of the Police Inspector whom Velu had killed before his arrival at the helm has remained alive with his vengeance all these years, carefully watering and cultivating it for so long a time and has found an opportune moment to strike him down. Ajit Kelkar played by Tinnu Anand hitherto assumed as a minor flutter of a butterfly wing has managed to create an earthquake slaying the all-powerful Velu Nayakar.

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Chaos written by James Gleick took me close to a couple of months to read. Just when I was realizing that the theory had already been envisaged to an extent by my spiritual guru Karl Marx, another spontaneous epiphany struck me as well. But the epiphany didn’t strike me from out of the blue. It was from a very well-known place just miles away from my house at Nanganallur. It was actually from Mylapore.

“பீலிபெய் சாகாடும் அச்சிறும் அப்பண்டஞ்  சால மிகுத்துப் பெயின்”

‘With peacock feathers light, you load the wain; Yet, heaped too high, the axle snaps in twain’.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:

1. Chaos: Making a new science by James Gleick.

2. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels.

3. Reason in Revolt by Ted Grant and Alan Woods

4. https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2020/08/01/readers-write-in-236-a-quick-guide-to-darwin-and-marx/

5. https://www.treehugger.com/amazing-fractals-found-in-nature-4868776