❄️Systems Thinking: On Turbulences (Quotes)

"[...] the influence of a single butterfly is not only a fine detail - it is confined to a small volume. Some of the numerical methods which seem to be well adapted for examining the intensification of errors are not suitable for studying the dispersion of errors from restricted to unrestricted regions. One hypothesis, unconfirmed, is that the influence of a butterfly's wings will spread in turbulent air, but not in calm air." (Edward N Lorenz, [talk] 1972)

"Although we expect to find eddies in turbulent flow, we do not know when any specific eddy will come into being or die away . We cannot yet predict how eddies interact. Similarly, we know as a general rule that any particle within a turbulent flow gets knocked about in an aimless fashion by the swirls, so that it describes an erratic meandering path, but at any given moment we cannot predict the precise location or velocity of the particle." (Peter B Stevens, "Patterns in Nature", 1974)

"The analysis of turbulence in terms of probability reveals several interesting things about eddies. For instance, the average eddy moves a distance about equal to its own diameter before it generates small eddies that move, more often than not, in the opposite direction. Those smaller eddies generate still smaller eddies and the process continues until all the energy dissipates as heat through molecular motion." (Peter B Stevens, "Patterns in Nature", 1974)

"Turbulence forms the primordial pattern, the chaos that was 'in the beginning'." (Peter B Stevens, "Patterns in Nature", 1974)

"In a real experiment the noise present in a signal is usually considered to be the result of the interplay of a large number of degrees of freedom over which one has no control. This type of noise can be reduced by improving the experimental apparatus. But we have seen that another type of noise, which is not removable by any refinement of technique, can be present. This is what we have called the deterministic noise. Despite its intractability it provides us with a way to describe noisy signals by simple mathematical models, making possible a dynamical system approach to the problem of turbulence." (David Ruelle, "Chaotic Evolution and Strange Attractors: The statistical analysis of time series for deterministic nonlinear systems", 1989)

"Now, the main problem with a quasiperiodic theory of turbulence (putting several oscillators together) is the following: when there is a nonlinear coupling between the oscillators, it very often happens that the time evolution does not remain quasiperiodic. As a matter of fact, in this latter situation, one can observe the appearance of a feature which makes the motion completely different from a quasiperiodic one. This feature is called sensitive dependence on initial conditions and turns out to be the conceptual key to reformulating the problem of turbulence." (David Ruelle, "Chaotic Evolution and Strange Attractors: The statistical analysis of time series for deterministic nonlinear systems", 1989)

"Turbulence, or chaos, is not universal but comes and goes. Chaos may emerge from order, but order may also emerge from chaos." (J Barkley Rosser Jr., "From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities", 1991)

"The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent environment." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The internet model has many lessons for the new economy but perhaps the most important is its embrace of dumb swarm power. The aim of swarm power is superior performance in a turbulent environment. When things happen fast and furious, they tend to route around central control. By interlinking many simple parts into a loose confederation, control devolves from the center to the lowest or outermost points, which collectively keep things on course. A successful system, though, requires more than simply relinquishing control completely to the networked mob." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Let's face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That's what makes the world interesting, that's what makes it beautiful, and that's what makes it work." (Donella H Meadow, "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", 2008)

"Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge from small actions. Change involves a belief in the possible, even the 'impossible'. Moreover, social innovators don’t follow a linear pathway of change; there are ups and downs, roller-coaster rides along cascades of dynamic interactions, unexpected and unanticipated divergences, tipping points and critical mass momentum shifts. Indeed, things often get worse before they get better as systems change creates resistance to and pushback against the new. Traditional evaluation approaches are not well suited for such turbulence. Traditional evaluation aims to control and predict, to bring order to chaos. Developmental evaluation accepts such turbulence as the way the world of social innovation unfolds in the face of complexity. Developmental evaluation adapts to the realities of complex nonlinear dynamics rather than trying to impose order and certainty on a disorderly and uncertain world." (Michael Q Patton, "Developmental Evaluation", 2010)