The journey to my office is about two hours from my home.while in the bus,i generally doze off,but at other times,when i dont feel like sleeping,i try observing more closely my random thoughts.one such thought was about the curious case of the guilty butterfly!
The popular butterfly effect says that flapping of a butterfly's wings causes a hurricane on the far side of the globe!so is it that the butterfly is guilty of taking so many lives?i also thought of another question-what about its "karma" (i felt it would be fun to view this concept of karma i keep hearing every now and then in terms of this)?i shall address the first question briefly,but the second one i prefer leaving open for more comments!:D
Of course,it would be a mistake to conclude that the butterfly is solely responsible for the hurricane. It might take many many butterflies to flap their wings at certain conditions to obtain the essential statistical features to trigger the hurricane. These tiny disturbances is what is manifested as a hurricane. Its something like a contraption,if you would like to call it that way!
This is associated with the well known but widely misunderstood chaos theory. The butterfly effect is closely related to what are called strange attractors, the most famous of them being the lorentz attractor. They give an insight into the fact that chaotic systems can be predicted over a short span of time (of course,short here is relative, im not addresing that question since it depends on what we choose to be our system) but not in the long term. That is because our accuracy to predict the system's behavior gets lower and lower; however, the system remains on the same attractor.
Now to the second question- however small it is, the butterfly is still guilty of contributing to a hurricane. what consequence does it have on its karma? does doing an act "unkowingly" add to it? or is it that its contribution to a hurricane is a pre-programmed part of the pattern(im opening the option of a fatalistic approach since this is another topic that i have heard a lot about), and hence it is destined to do so?
Since my second question deviates from science, i thought i could also discuss another crazy thought that crossed my mind with respect to chaos. I came across the fact that moon's tides stabilize the earth against influences that would otherwise lead to chaotic motion,causing rapid shifts of climate in "Taming the Infinite" by Ian Stewart(an excellent book). That lead me to wonder how guilty Piccolo would have felt after destroying the moon with a single blast to stop Gohan from causing any destruction in his monster form in dragonball Z. Of course,the creators of the series did not allow anything to happen to the planet in spite of the missing moon!:D
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Excuse me but a destroyed moon would leave a "ton" of debris that could potentially alter solar radiation felt on the earths surface, thereby directly leading to another ice age, let alone stabilize currents or tides. So DBZ out of the picture.
ReplyDeleteKarma would definitely take the butterfly into account for the hurricane. Every single harm we cause, conscious or not, is taken into account. That is the reason we are supposed to ask for forgiveness everyday in our prayers for all these things. And the benevolent god being who he is, would put it into our account anyway but take into consideration that you didnt mean it, thereby giving you another chance to lessen your karma and loose it by becoming enlightened at some point of time.
Interesting article! Keep up the day dreaming :D
:D
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