Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory was born in the 1960’s with the research of Edward Lorenze on global weather patterns and the effect of small changes in the beginnings of a weather system can lead to significant changes over time on a global scale (Black, 2008). Chaos Theory has also been dubbed as The Butterfly Effect by Lorenze, and he is credited with the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, then a major storm could be created in another part of the world (Black, 2008). Basically, Chaos Theory is concerned with the inability to predict the outcome of a situation with 100% accuracy because of an immeasurable number of variables that could affect the outcome. Chaos Theory is, in principle, all about the inability to estimate the outcome of any certain situation without some degree of uncertainty. The simplest example that I could find that actually seemed to explain Chaos Theory in a manner that would make sense to most people was by the character Dr. Ian Malcolm, as played by Jeff Goldblum, in the movie Jurassic Park. In the movie, Dr. Malcolm explains Chaos Theory using the example of a drop of water running off of a surface and the inability to correctly predict where the drop will go because of tiny changes in the environment (Spielberg, S. & Crichton, M., 1993).