David Peat

From Clockwork to Chaos 131ize a system exhaustively; that is, without any degree of error or uncertaintycreeping in. In turn, that uncertainty rapidly blows up whensystems iterate within themselves. Take the world’s weather again. Amathematical argument (based on the properties of fractals) demonstratesthat there can never be a sufficient number of weather stationsto collect all the information needed to describe the fine details of theweather at any one time. (The fractal dimension of weather is largerthan the fractal dimension of any network of weather stations.) Whileit is possible to predict weather trends for days in advance we can predictexactly what the weather will be at any precise instant. It may looklike heavy rain tomorrow but we cannot know just how many millimetersof rain will fall at a particular spot, or the exact time that rain willbegin.In addition, just as in quantum theory, the very act of observationof a system disturbs the properties of the system: the effect of introducinga probe or making a measurement when a system is at a bifurcationpoint or in a chaotic state can also cause that system to respondin an unpredictable way. Although it is always possible to adjust andfine-tune a linear system, things are entirely different when it comes tononlinearity. In certain regions of behavior the system may respond toa corrective manipulation; in other regions a small correction maypush the system in an unexpected direction.Chaos, Chaos EverywhereThe previous chapter argued that the way we represent the world has adeep influence on what we see. Chaos theory provides an excellent contemporaryexample of this phenomenon. Today we tend to “see” theworld, ourselves, and our organizations in terms of attractors, chaos,self-organization, and the butterfly effect. Economists and financialanalysts look for patterns of self-similarity within the daily and hourlyfluctuations of the stock market. Therapists speak of strange attractorsgoverning the repetitive behavior of their clients. Community leadersand business consultants are concerned with the dynamics of selforganizingsystems. Moviemakers create planetary geographies using