The following story ran in the Orange County Register on August 4, 2011:<\/p>\n
The \u201cbutterfly effect\u201d flapped its way briefly into popular culture with the help of Jeff Goldblum in \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d who explains it to a rapt Laura Dern just before the dinosaurs run amok.<\/p>\n
Since then, however, the idea behind it, called chaos theory, has suffered its own near extinction, at least in terms of trendy science chatter.<\/p>\n
It might be a case of overhyped expectations, said Chapman University psychology professor David Pincus, who is hosting a conference on chaos theory on the campus Thursday, Friday and Saturday that is expected to draw some 80 researchers from nine countries.<\/p>\n
The theory describes systems that are fully determined ahead of time, and yet evolve in ways that are completely unpredictable. The shorthand illustration is the flapping of a butterfly\u2019s wings setting off a chain of events that result in a hurricane \u2014 in other words, complex systems whose outcome is extremely sensitive to initial conditions.<\/p>\n
But within those patterns, some saw the potential for better forecasting of how complex system change.<\/p>\n
Popularized by author James Gleick in his 1987 book, \u201cChaos: Making a New Science,\u201d the theory led some to believe it was just a matter of time before we could make pinpoint accurate predictions for systems like the weather, or the stock market.<\/p>\n
When that didn\u2019t happen, the theory\u2019s popular fortunes sagged.<\/p>\n
But Pincus says the theory is alive and well \u2014 and has proven highly useful in a variety of fields, including psychology and life sciences.<\/p>\n
Q. How do you explain chaos theory to us lay people?<\/p>\n
A. It\u2019s a mathematical theory, first of all, and the essential gist is that you can have a relatively simple set of equations that produce what appears to be \u2014 what actually is \u2014 unpredictable output. What produces these apparently random patterns is completely known and determined. You can write them in an equation.<\/p>\n
If you get lots and lots of data and look at these patterns over a long length of time, what you find is that there\u2019s an underlying order to them. That order is called, technically, an attractor.<\/p>\n
Q. A lot of people remember chaos theory from Jurassic Park, when Jeff Goldblum talked about it.<\/p>\n
A. Goldblum talked about bifurcatings, when he rolls water on the back of (Laura Dern\u2019s) hand \u2014 how it\u2019s unpredictable. It\u2019s a pretty rudimentary description. It\u2019s a movie.<\/p>\n
Q. Chaos theory seemed to bubble up into popular culture, then recede. Was it because the theory didn\u2019t do what it was supposed to do? Or did people get bored and turn to something else?<\/p>\n
A. I think it was both. More than anything else, it\u2019s an emerging paradigm. There was an initial burst. There will be a re-burst. Chaos theory is in some respects a mathematical abstraction. When you get into the real world, what at the end you find more is complexity theory. It\u2019s sort of the opposite of chaos theory.<\/p>\n
Chaos theory is some simplified, deterministic equations with sporadic, wild output. Complexity theory, with many, many manipulations, produces more orderly output. Self organization is a good buzz word. So that seems to be a bit more useful than chaos theory. So does catastrophe theory, and bifurcations \u2014 cousins of chaos, other kinds of non-linear dynamics.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve got a lot of different disciplines working on a lot of different problems for only about 30 years, using a lot of different tools. You\u2019ve got an evolving paradigm in science.<\/p>\n
Q. Is it a situation where people thought they were going to predict the weather and the stock market, and it didn\u2019t turn out that way?<\/p>\n
A. There probably was some of that. I know of at least one person who tried to figure out a stock algorithm. The problem with chaos theory is, things are still unpredictable. Probably some people, like people do \u2014 it\u2019s human nature \u2014 were dancing around the butterfly, trying to make it rain. People get very excited. There\u2019s still a streak of modernism: people think science is going to save us in one, big, fell swoop. And then there\u2019s the rest of us, hanging in there, grinding it out.<\/p>\n
Q. Despite chaos theory\u2019s downturn in the popular culture, it sounds like you and your colleagues have found some use for it.<\/p>\n
A. And it\u2019s growing by leaps and bounds.<\/p>\n
Q. Can you boil down the usefulness of chaos theory in psychology to a sentence?<\/p>\n
A. I can understand the actual structure of a personality. I can look at how it is shaped. It\u2019s like an X-ray of the personality. This has broad significance. Essentially what you\u2019ve got is the principle of adapatation in nature. Where it is most useful is in living systems. They are organized on their own, and the way in which they are organized has functional significance.<\/p>\n
Q. Sounds like chaos is alive and well, despite what people might think.<\/p>\n
A. Oh, completely. And it\u2019s rigorous. It\u2019s really important for people to realize that this is not flaky stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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