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The butterfly effect is the phenomenon in chaos theory whereby a minor change in circumstances can cause a large change in outcome. The butterfly metaphor, created by Edward Norton Lorenz to emphasize the inherent unpredictability of events, was taken up by popular culture, and interpreted to mean that each event could be explained by some small cause. The term is found in many areas of popular culture including the names of films and of pop groups.

Films

The French film Le Battement d'ailes du papillon (2000), literally "The beating of the butterfly's wings", translated as Happenstance in the English release, makes direct references to the butterfly effect in its title, dialogue, and theme.

In arguably the earliest illustration of the butterfly effect in a story on film, an angel in It's a Wonderful Life (1946) shows George Bailey how rewriting history so that George was never born would detrimentally affect the lives of everyone in his hometown. In a subtle butterfly effect, snow falls in one version of reality but not the other.-->

In the movie The Butterfly Effect (2004), Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher), when reading from his adolescent journals, is able to essentially "redo" parts of his past. As he continues to do this, he realizes that even though his intentions are good, the actions he takes always have unintended consequences. Despite its title, however, this movie does not seriously explore the implications of the butterfly effect; only the lives of the principal characters seem to change from one scenario to another. The greater world around them is mostly unaffected. Furthermore, the changes made in the past of the principal character are far from minor and in that sense the title of the film is a misnomer. An element of the butterfly effect in general terms is that differences in start conditions for different scenario outcomes are virtually undetectable, and consequences are not related to cause in a directly apparent way.

In the 1993 movie, Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum's character Dr. Malcolm attempts to explain chaos theory to Laura Dern's character, Dr. Sattler, specifically using the butterfly effect as an example.

In the 2005 movie A Sound of Thunder (borrowing the title from the Ray Bradbury story mentioned in the next section), an accidental killing of a butterfly literally triggers time waves that change the present bit by bit.

In the 2008 Tamil movie, Dasavatharam, the protagonist Govind (Kamal Haasan) states that the butterfly effect and chaos theory can be used to explain how a 12th-century event in South India had an adverse effect on the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.

In the 2010 film Hot Tub Time Machine, the butterfly effect is mentioned when Jacob explains that stepping on an insect in the past may, for instance, result in the internet ceasing to exist in the future.

The concept is referred to specifically – when describing how Nemo Nobody's parents met – and generally throughout the film Mr. Nobody (2009). In the plot, multiple stories are told consecutively with the differences being the result of choices made by the main character, Nemo Nobody.

Two episodes of Ugly Betty are named "The Butterfly Effect Part 1" and "The Butterfly Effect Part 2".

Literature and print

Charles Fort, wrote about the interconnectedness of nature and the butterfly effect before the term was coined in his books New Lands (1932) and Wild Talents (1941). In "New Lands" he makes reference to a migration of birds in New York that could cause a storm in China.

In his 1941 book "Storm," George R. Stewart also made a similar, pre-butterfly reference to the weather-related interconnectedness of small effects, reversing the polarity of Charles Fort's example above. On pages 43–44, he mentions the Junior Meteorologist who "thought of his old professor's saying: 'A Chinaman sneezing in Shen-si may set men to shoveling snow in New York City.'"

In the 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder", the killing of a butterfly during the time of dinosaurs causes the future to change in subtle but meaningful ways: e.g., the spelling of English and the outcome of a political election. Bradbury wrote: "Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead. "Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried Eckels. It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important! Could it?"

The butterfly effect was invoked by fictional chaotician Ian Malcolm in both the novel Jurassic Park and subsequent film adaptation. He used it to explain the inherent instability of (among other things) an amusement park with dinosaurs as the attraction.

In the novelist Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, the magical "Quantum Weather Butterfly", whose wings have finite area but infinite length, has the ability to manipulate weather patterns. These microclimates, which the butterfly uses to attract mates and fend off predators, play an important role in the resolution of the plot.

In the 1632 series of time-travel science fiction by Eric Flint and David Weber et al., speculation about the butterfly effect that happens when the West Virginia town of Grantville is instantaneously dropped into 1632 Germany. The speculation is that the events which drive the genetic makeup of a human are so sensitive to chance that every human born in the world changed by the "Ring of Fire" event would be genetically different from what they otherwise would have been within a very small period of time, depending on the distance from Germany, but in all cases within a year. Specifically, thousands of sperm vying for entry into an egg would be very sensitive to very small differences in position or timing that would assuredly result in a different sperm winning out, and a different person (a brother or sister, but no closer related than that) being born. The speculation centers especially on the birth of Baruch de Spinoza in Amsterdam a few months following the Ring event.

The (practical) applications are explored in Greg Egan's Permutation City. The premise is that if the details of the chaotic system can be determined with sufficient accuracy, then the butterfly effect could be used to leverage small actions into much larger desired consequences. E.g., deliberately flap the butterfly in just the place and time so as to end a drought, or prevent a hurricane from forming.

A variant is introduced in the 1993 short story "The Mosquito's Choice" by Henry Cowper, describing two alternate history timelines diverging radically due solely to a choice made by a mosquito. On a hot summer evening during the First World War, a French artillery officer is making calculations for the offensive on the German positions due to be launched the next day, while his orderly is preparing coffee. In one timeline the mosquito bites the officer – making him lose concentration and transpose figures in his calculations, and leading to the next day's artillery bombardment falling off target. This resulted in the history we know. In the divergent timeline the mosquito bites the orderly while the officer makes the correct calculations – with the result that on the following day a French artillery shell killes Corporal Adolf Hitler, radically changing world history.

The butterfly effect and strange attractors: plot of the Lorenz attractor, where paths starting from a slightly different initial position can diverge widely.

Susan Hawthorne published a book of poetry entitled The Butterfly Effect. One of the poems, "strange tractors", includes the lines "No, here there's not a straight line to be seen anywhere—chaos in the shape of two vulval wings—the butterfly effect".

Interactive media

The company behind the video game Eve Online, CCP used the Butterfly Effect in one of their advertisements.

The sports blog The Dubious Goals Committee run a feature called The Butterfly Effect, which details how sporting landscapes could have changed based on a single moment in history.

The installation El día de la langosta (The day of the locust) by Mexican artist Susana Rodríguez explores the concept of a small human action leading on to large effects, drawing on the concepts of chaos theory and the butterfly effect.

The webcomic xkcd published an interactive comic strip on April Fools' Day 2014 entitled Lorenz. The webcomic could go down dozens of different paths according to small choices made by the reader in various panels. The title text for the strip directly alluded to the butterfly effect, reading, "Every choice, no matter how small, begins a new story."

The 2015 episodic video game Life Is Strange, consisting of 5 episodes, focuses on main character Maxine Caulfield, a student who discovers her powers to rewind time. The game revolves around the player's choices that cause both major and minor consequences in later episodes. One of the main recurring themes in Life is Strange is the appearance of a blue butterfly, which directly references the butterfly effect.

Television

In The Simpsons Halloween episode, "Time and Punishment", Homer repeatedly travels back to the time of dinosaurs with a time machine (à la Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder"). Each time there, Homer's actions (involving intentional and unintentional violence) drastically alter the current universe: some of the changes include a totalitarian society with Ned Flanders as world dictator, a universe where his family is rich and classy and it rains donuts, and a seemingly normal universe with the exception of humans having long reptilian tongues.

In a 2004 television episode of comedy sitcom Scrubs called "My Butterfly", the episode is shown in two parts: The first in which a butterfly lands on a woman sitting in the hospital's waiting room, and the second where time is rewound and the butterfly instead lands on the man next to her. Both halves of the episode show the noticeably (albeit sensationally) different outcomes that stem directly from the original choice of landing locations of this butterfly.

In a first-season episode of the stop-motion animation show Robot Chicken titled "Operation: Rich in Spirit" there is a sketch where a young boy tries to explain the butterfly effect to a young girl. When the young girl squishes the butterfly, it causes earthquakes in Japan. A Japanese woman retaliates, stepping on a butterfly, which causes a volcano to erupt behind the children. The boy retaliates as well, ripping a butterfly in half, which causes Godzilla to terrorize Japan.

In a second season episode of CSI titled "Chaos Theory", the entire CSI team investigates a disappearance of a young woman at a local university. Forensics leads them to possible suspects, and possible suspects all have probable motives, but nothing seems to pan out. This leads the team to discuss the "Chaos Theory": when combined, many seemingly innocuous events may have a deadly outcome, and closure is not always within reach.

In the series 1 episode of Doctor Who called "Father's Day", Rose Tyler goes back in time to the day her father dies and saves him from the accident that kills him creating an alternate timeline. A group of creatures known as Reapers come to repair the damage created. By the end of the episode Pete Tyler, knowing that the only way the timeline can be repaired is with his death sacrifices himself and runs out in front of the car that should have killed him. In the series 3 episode of Doctor Who called "The Shakespeare Code", Martha says that she's worried about that she can change the future of human race by stepping on the butterfly after landing in Elizabethan London (à la Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder") – which The Doctor acknowledges as " I'll tell you what then, don't.... step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you?"

An episode of the third season of Heroes was entitled "The Butterfly Effect", in which the character of Peter Petrelli travels from the future to alter the timeline caused by his brother Nathan revealing the existence of humans with special abilities. His mother, Angela, who has the power of precognitive dreams, is aware of his actions, and warns him that his seemingly minor alterations to the timeline can have major consequences, alluding to Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" to explain the butterfly effect to Peter. Later episodes also have Hiro Nakamura refer to Samuel Sullivan as 'Butterfly Man' after he convinces Hiro to go back in time and change things for the better.

Dennis Miller touched on the issue in an episode of Dennis Miller Live, linking the flapping of a butterfly's wings, dislodging some dust, which makes a monkey sneeze, which startles a herd of gazelle into a stampede, which causes a nearby dam to break, sending increased moisture into the air, causing a powerful storm in the upper atmosphere, which causes his cell phone signal to deteriorate and drop calls (which he immediately blames on the butterflies themselves).

In the sci-fi anime series and game, Steins;Gate, the butterfly effect is used extensively in the gameplay and plot, and is the device the main character, Okabe Rintarou, uses to save his friends from their fated deaths. It is also one of the core explanations for the series' science, along with the many-worlds interpretation.

An episode of the NBC sitcom Community entitled "Remedial Chaos Theory" revolves around the concept of various existing timelines, each set up by the character Jeff rolling a die to determine which character will pick up a delivery pizza. The episode's plot follows how each timeline differs and remains the same depending on which character is chosen to retrieve the pizza. This episode of Community has been called one of the greatest sitcom episodes ever aired.

In an episode of the animated Nickelodeon comedy "The Loud House", The Butterfly Effect, main protagonist Lincoln Loud accidentally destroys his second-youngest sister Lisa's chemicals and experiments, rapidly setting off an unexpected chain of events that alter the household.

Music

The Portuguese gothic metal band Moonspell 1999 experimental album is named The Butterfly Effect.

The French Singer Bénabar wrote a song called "l'effet papillon" ( "the Butterfly effect") referring loosely to the concept on his 2008 album Infréquentable.

The Spanish band La Oreja de van Gogh touches on the effect in their song "Mariposa" (Butterfly).

The Australian rock band The Butterfly Effect is named for the concept.

The song "Butterflies and Hurricanes" by the English rock band Muse is also based on the concept of the butterfly effect.

The British rock band The Verve have touched upon the topic in the songs "Butterfly" and "Catching the Butterfly".

Jonathan Coulton refers to the phenomenon when, in the song "Mandelbrot Set" he speculates that Benoit Mandelbrot's birth was preceded by the flapping of a butterfly's wings a million miles away.

The violinist Diana Yukawa's 2009 pop album is called The Butterfly Effect.

The South Korean hip hop group Epik High produced a song titled "Butterfly Effect" on their 2008 mini album Lovescream.

The UK hip hop artist Lowkey has a song titled "The Butterfly Effect" featuring Adrian on his 2011 album Soundtrack to the Struggle about how a soldier's specific actions in war caused him to be disabled, mentally ill and homeless.

In the 2010 hip-hop song "Butterfly Effect" by Kinetics & One Love, rapper Kinetics ponders what he would do if he had a time machine and could change historical events or right the regrets of his past – ultimately deciding against wanting to change anything in the fear of small changes having much larger or unintended consequences in the present. The message of the song is one of accepting things the way they are over regretting or yearning for an alternate life.

The Japanese girl group Prizmmy have a song titled "Butterfly Effect", which was used as the fourth opening theme for the anime Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live.

See also

• Point of divergence
• Alternate history
• Rube Goldberg machine

External links

• The meaning of the butterfly: Why pop culture loves the 'butterfly effect,' and gets it totally wrong, Peter Dizikes, Boston Globe, June 8, 2008

Category:Science in popular culture Category:Chaos theory Category:Topics in popular culture