{"quotes":[{"text":"If we increase r [in a logistic map] even more, we will eventually force the system into a period-8 limit cycle, then a period-16 cycle, and so on. The amount that we have to increase r to get another period doubling gets smaller and smaller for each new bifurcation. This cascade of period doublings is reminiscent of the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in that an infinite number of bifurcations (or time steps in the race) can be confined to a local region of finite size. At a very special critical value, the dynamical system will fall into what is essentially an infinite-period limit cycle. This is chaos.","author":"Gary William Flake","tags":["chaos-theory","mathematics"],"id":28107,"author_id":"Gary+William+Flake"},{"text":"It’s not an academic question any more to ask what’s going to happen to a cloud. People very much want to know—and that means there’s money available for it. That problem is very much within the realm of physics and it’s a problem very much of the same caliber. You’re looking at something complicated, and the present way of solving it is to try to look at as many points as you can, enough stuff to say where the cloud is, where the warm air is, what its velocity is, and so forth. Then you stick it into the biggest machine you can afford and you try to get an estimate of what it’s going to do next. But this is not very realistic.","author":"James Gleick","tags":["chaos-theory","philosophy","reductionism","science"],"id":97593,"author_id":"James+Gleick"},{"text":"I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world.","author":"Alice Hoffman","tags":["butterfly-effect","chaos-theory","wishes"],"id":141277,"author_id":"Alice+Hoffman"},{"text":"In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of thecat, although in this case there were three determinate states the catcould be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.","author":"Terry Pratchett","tags":["chaos-theory","quantum-physics","schrodinger-s-cat","wisdom"],"id":203684,"author_id":"Terry+Pratchett"},{"text":"Overwhelmed by life's complexity? Realize that our alphabet consists of only 26 letters, calculations are based on a set of 10 numbers, all variations in music are based on 7 musical notes, our DNA can be dissected into 4 letters and space on the Planck scale is probably made solely out of binary code.","author":"Martijn Budel","tags":["chaos-theory","complexity-of-life","existentialism"],"id":207388,"author_id":"Martijn+Budel"},{"text":"If patterns of ones and zeroes were 'like' patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?","author":"Thomas Pynchon","tags":["chaos-theory","computers","science","science-fiction"],"id":230656,"author_id":"Thomas+Pynchon"},{"text":"Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.","author":"James Gleick","tags":["chaos","chaos-theory","life","mathematics","paradigm","paradigm-shift","philosophy","physics","science","thomas-kuhn"],"id":264353,"author_id":"James+Gleick"},{"text":"That small difference made all the difference.","author":"Johnny Rich","tags":["change","chaos","chaos-theory","difference"],"id":271735,"author_id":"Johnny+Rich"},{"text":"The only simple truth is that there is nothing simple in this complex universe. Everything relates. Everything connects.","author":"Johnny Rich","tags":["causality","chaos","chaos-theory","complexity","connection","connects","everything-connects","only-connect","simple","simple-truth","truth","universe"],"id":277032,"author_id":"Johnny+Rich"},{"text":"There (is) order and even great beauty in what looks like total chaos. If we look closely enough at the randomness around us, patterns will start to emerge.","author":"Aaron Sorkin","tags":["chaos-theory","creation","glory-of-god"],"id":299309,"author_id":"Aaron+Sorkin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}