Cause & the butterfly effect

The butterfly effect is a popular term in media which one can describe as a domino of events which typically start with something small that leads to a gargantuan ending. Some silly example is how taking a wrong turn could lead to a war that kill millions of people, but as a matter of fact this is true. Franz Ferdinand's chauffer took a turn after an already attempted assassination, towards a street where another assassin was waiting on a wrong street. From there, political tensions across Europe erupted only to erupt into World War 1, seeing the deaths of around 40 million soldiers and civilians. Maybe without turning to this road, none of these horrible events would have occurred. These small little details and coincidences are what lead to many events and I want to explore a few of these interesting cases today before going over the theory behind this idea.

The example I would like to look at today is the story of physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming. By 1927, Alexander Fleming was already considered a master in his field. He was already popular from his previous research such as his discovery of Isozyme and now was focused on trying to research ways to counter staphylococci. In 1928, he went on a holiday to meet with family, only to return and be welcomed with a plate of bacteria samples found dead. This, he found out, was due to a common fungus that lied around on his dirty dishes which could be from type of bread mold. This action here, of being very slobby, allowed him to discover one of the most crucial pieces of modern medicine, penicillin, and this all originated from a small action of acting a bit dirty. This not only shows the scale that individual actions have in the long run but how this can be both a blessing and curse depending on its outcome.

Now an example in popular media is from the cartoon Milo Murphy's law which shows the contrary of what may result from a small action. I grew up watching Disney XD and one of the many shows that aired was Milo Murphy's law which followed the life of Milo Murphy and his very bad luck. The premise followed the adage of the original Murphy's law which stated "anything that can go wrong will go wrong", and displayed the idea of the butterfly effect through little actions causing a larger problem. This show conveys it in quite a comedic setting as Milo Murphy learns to adapt to this lifestyle and takes advantage of his bad luck however, this idea of the butterfly effect may poorly reflect our, actions as human beings. I think another way of describing this idea is as the domino effect as one event leads to another triggering more and more things to occur. Ocean pollution is one of the issues we face due to our ignorance and selfish desire. The problem mainly stems from the little actions be it, littering some wrappers, throwing away a cigarette, or losing your belongings to the ocean, this eventually accumulates from the large scale of this world leading to our oceans' ecosystems degrading over time. As of now 33 billion pounds of plastic waste enter the ocean each year and this is not all because of 1 small even but the accumulation of many smaller events. The only people to blame are ourselves.

Now finally, I want to go over what is the butterfly effect and how this plays a part of our lives. This all starts with mathematician Edward Lorenz who also being a meteorologist discovered how even the smallest changes can cause the greatest effects such as how a butterfly can create a tornado from the beating of its wings. This is an essential part of chaos theory which describes how a set initial system's conditions can cause a larger effect later deterministically (not randomly). I think this works with past examples as well, such as Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin only occurring due to the initial condition that he lived in such a dirty manner. This means also that anything large can be created from something small depending on the original circumstance.

To finish this off, I want to say that I have come to find many examples of the butterfly effect during my research of this article and what I learned mainly is that change has to start somewhere be it big, small, good, or bad, though, this initial point is where dominoes fall to create something bigger. We all may need to think about how we can get this chain going and change our world for the better.