chaos theory

My university calculus professor was a poet.  Actually, he was a mathematician, a poet, and a philosopher all rolled into one grandfatherly type of a man.  I used to stay after class, nearly every session, and talk to him about philosophy and poetry, it was the only liberal arts education this science-oriented student was getting at the time.  In every other aspect of my academics I was eye ball deep in equations and periodic tables but I could talk to him about a haiku or the presence (or absence) of free will for ages.

But this isn't really about Grandfather Jerry.  This is about math and philosophy.  Grandfather Jerry just happened to be the person who I heard from for the first time that mathematics and philosophy are not really all that different from each other.  As odd as it may sound one needs a mind capable of thinking in the abstract to be good with numbers as well as to be good at expounding upon the great questions of life.  Someone who can excel in mathematics can certainly find a home in philosophical studies as well.

One place where math and philosophy intersect is in a concept called Chaos Theory.  The briefest technical explanation of this theory is that an outcome of a system is highly sensitive to its initial conditions.   Or to clarify, a small change in the initial condition of a system can lead to dramatic changes to the system on a long-term, grand scale.  The briefest non-technical explanation of Chaos Theory is what happens at the beginning, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can and will have a large effect on the eventual outcome of a situation.  Most people know Chaos Theory as The Butterfly Effect.  You know, a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and three weeks later and a continent away a hurricane is born.

In math, Chaos Theory is used to describe situations in which small miscalculations like those inherent in rounding numbers for computation lead to different outcomes.  One person rounds one way and another rounds the other and in complicated mathematical equations they will each get a hugely different outcome.  In philosophy, the theory plays out much in the same way but instead of a numerical figure you are looking at the progression of a life based on a few (or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million...I think you get my point) events that have shaped the course of said life.

Chaos Theory is what makes prediction nearly impossible.   There is no telling how minuscule variables will effect the overall outcome.  Numbers, life, whatever, there is no predicting.

I certainly could never have predicted that I would be here at thirty-two years old, married and the mother of two children; one dead and the other currently napping peacefully in her crib.

Looking back it is easy to see how circumstance or certain choices I've made have shaped my life to where I am now.  For instance, I can trace the origins of my marriage back to a fight that I had with my friend Natalie when we were only nineteen years old, five years before I even met Leif.  A million other little decisions during those five years made it so that when we did finally meet we were both single and, eventually, in the place in our lives where we were able to fall in love.

On a deeper level I can see how a myriad of seemingly innocuous events, decisions, and circumstances ultimately led to George's conception and death.  From the particular time Leif and I had sex; a moment earlier or later and who knows what sperm would have fertilized that egg.  Who knows, we may have conceived a completely different baby who had no health issues at all.  Or the moment I sat in a parking garage rescheduling the ultrasound that would eventually reveal George's rapid heart rate.  That appointment was originally scheduled a week earlier and for some reason I can no longer recall I made the decision to push it back seven days.  Maybe if I had kept that original appointment we would have caught the condition early enough that the medication would have saved his life.  On the other hand, maybe the appointment would have been a day or two before his heart sped up and it would not have been caught at all until I developed the Mirror Syndrome and became seriously ill.  Or simply, one day I could have walked into the OB's office only to have her tell me that our baby's heart had stopped.

But none of those things happened.  Instead Leif and I conceived George and I made the appointment when I did.  It all led to George dying, and, something I've just come to grips with, Clio's existence.  This, folks, has been a hard pill for me to swallow.  We waited to try and conceive the second time around because I could not come to terms with the idea that a subsequent child would only be alive because George was dead.  Originally we had planned on waiting six to nine months after our first child was born to try to conceive the next and so in my mind if we waited that amount of time after George died we would still be sticking to our plan.  I wanted to pretend that in some reality, somewhere, had different choices been made, I would have all my babies with me.  George and Clio.

In reality, though, Clio is currently sleeping peacefully in her crib because George is dead.  Had George lived I would have been ovulating on a different schedule, and even if I was ovulating on the same schedule chances are that Leif and I would not have had sex at the exact same time on the exact same day.  Things would have gone down a different path.  I never even would have known the possibility of her existence.

But that is all history, so to speak.  What happens next, the rest of Clio's story and my own, there is no predicting.  The other children I will have, the people we will meet and interact with, the person Clio will marry, the kids she will have...all of their lives different because one little baby boy's heart beat too fast.

It's all a crazy mind fuck.  It is all just a web of chance interactions. It is all just chaos.