I dwell on chaos theory. I don't think its significance has been properly absorbed by the public consciousness yet. There's something simultaneously liberating and unsettling about it.<p>For instance I'm often conscious that it's a mathematical near certainty that if I'd done anything different in my earlier years, absolutely anything at all, then my children would not exist, and therefore I cannot bring myself to regret anything I ever did. Conversely it's unnerving to consider how unlikely my own existence is in the first place.<p>Also, since appreciating chaos theory, I can no longer enjoy any movie involving time travel.
I remember reading about him in <i>Chaos: Making a New Science</i> where James Gleick portrayed him as a young man. That was in the late 1980s when I was a high school student. Time flies :(
I was peripherally involved in chaos theory in the early 80s. I never met Mitch but I still think of him as a kid not much older than me. I had no idea he was 74. Age creeps up on one.
As a kid I remember playing with the logistic map (possibly pointed at it by Dawkins?) following Robert May and Verhulst explanations of population dynamics. Feigenbaum's constant(s) seemed to point a way through the chaos (this at a time when plotting the mandelbrot set - slowly - was all the rage).<p>[0]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants</a><p>With modern computers and software this stuff should be so much easier.
I spent some good times exploring deterministic chaos.<p>Mathematica had sound outputs for the logistic map. I remember one could distinctly hear the octaves progression, then noise, then a fifth. I remember making a video overlapping the sound and the cobweb plot to "see" what I was hearing.<p>Instead of studying calculus, I fell for the trap of trying neverending, eardrum busting, iteratibly non-converging functions.<p>My study method was pretty chaotic.
If you're interested in Feigenbaum's constant, check out Numberphile's video about it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrYE4MdoLQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrYE4MdoLQ</a>.