My favorite part of chaos theory is the concept of the Strange Attractor. Complex systems based on just a few variables create patterns, with solutions that cluster and repeat. They are like mathematical gravity wells.

Take the climate over the last few hundred thousand years. It has fluctuated between glacial and interglacial states, much more so than most of the planet's history. We can see these two conditions (ice / no ice) as attractors in the current climactic scenario. Most of the time is spent in one condition or the other, they tend to remain stable more than they change. However, if one of the controlling climactic forces changes past a certain threshold, the whole system flips to another attractor - a new normal, if you will.

So it is not the fluttering of a butterflies wings that changes things. Personally, I hate that metaphor. But the variation of one variable, in seemingly small ways, can throw the whole system to another state.

If I understand these things, and I'm not sure I've groked it yet, this set up of strange attractors exists in the weird space between chaos and predictability. Picture a smooth stream of water as predictable. Things are going in pretty much a straight line. Put an obstruction in the flow and you get turbulence - ripples and eddies and a decreased predictability. The eddies are the strange attractors, in a way. Plunge the flow over a cataract, and all bets are off...that's chaos.

It has been my observation that all the really cool stuff takes place at that edge of chaos, where things are stirred in fractal ways, orbiting around strange. Life begins there. Creativity dances there.

I'll try to remember that as I watch them dig up my basement to replace a sewer line, watch others repair the LCD screen on my brand-new computer, fix the sprinkler system, mow the yard, finish that map project, check the bee hives, brush the cat, clean the car, read that article about the origin of the Colorado Mineral Belt, call Mom, swat down the current rush of spammers on the HZ ...

Edge of chaos indeed.

"I ride tandem
with the random
Things don't run
the way I planned them..."

Peter Gabriel