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High Anxieties - The Mathematics of Chaos
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| Subjects: Economics, History, Mathematics, Physics, Science, Space, Technology | ||||
The film begins with Henri Poincaré who in 1889 discovered that the solar system itself was not stable. He had discovered the maths of what we now call the butterfly effect – that a tiny disturbance can grow until it creates an unstoppable storm. At the same time, in Russia, Alexander Lyapunov was looking at the mathematics of stability and instability. His work opened the door to the modern idea of the Tipping Point. Poincaré was horrified by his discovery and never took his work further, while Lyapunov, who was trying to study stability and instability during the upheavals of the Russian revolution, took his own life. His work was forgotten. Between them, Poincaré and Lyapunov could have set us on the road to a new and revolutionary understanding of the true nature of the instabilities, the butterfly effects and tipping points of the world we live in. Instead we continued to believe in the Newtonian world of stability and order until the turmoil and economic instabilities of late 60s and 70s made us question all over again. Only this time, mathematicians, armed with the power of the computer rediscovered what Poincaré and Lyapunov had seen. The new mathematics of chaos began to tell us that systems have in-built instabilities. That those instabilities will grow if a system is pumped faster and faster, or if systems are connected together. But still we did not listen. The very machine that was allowing us to understand instability, was also allowing us to create the conditions for it. In 1987 computers connected the world’s economies together into one interlinked global economy and global free trade was born… and the rest, as they say, is history. As we approach tipping points in both the economy and the climate, the film examines the mathematics we have been reluctant to face up to and asks if, even now, we would rather bury our heads in the sand rather than face harsh truths. |
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