How well can we predict the weather?
We do a pretty good job of it now, actually. The first weather forecasts from the US federal government came out of the 1870s, and were meant to warn people of coastal and northern lake storms. We have come a long way since. In fact, a five day forecast today is about as accurate as a 24-hour forecast back in 1980. Also, the forecasted next-day temperature high is accurate to within 3 degrees F.
So we are getting better at this, but will we ever really be able to predict the weather with total certainty? We used to think so. We used to believe in something called determinism. That is a nice word that refers to an idea coming out of scientific giants of the past like Isaac Newton and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Sometimes they called their thoughts the “clockwork universe.” The way of thinking was this: if we were able to know everything about the universe at any one point in time, then we could completely predict what would come afterwards. Laplace stated it like this: “Nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to [our] eyes.”
Unpredictability just didn’t exist for the clockwork universe. You could determine anything about the future if you knew enough about the present. If you knew everything about the weather now, you could always predict what the weather would be like hereafter.
One of the people who smashed this idea to bits was Edward Lorenz, a meteorology professor at MIT. He has a computer simulation of weather patterns that was based on 12 variables. He happened to repeat a simulation he had done before but with very small changes in the starting value of those variables. For example instead of the value being 0.506127 it was rounded to 0.506. What he found was that those very small changes caused huge differences down the line.
More research has been done on this and today we might know this as the butterfly effect. The idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the globe could cause severe differences in the weather patterns in the future. Small changes now can make huge differences later. The interesting thing is this is true of our decisions too. You can see this easily in the bible. Look at the life of Joseph, for example.
Genesis 37:17-28
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. 18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. 20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
21 When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. 22 “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— 24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
25 As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
26 Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? 27 Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
You probably know the story of Joseph and how his life led to the forming of the Israelite nation. Notice all of the things that had to go just right just in that passage for this nation to form. How would things have changed if the brother’s original plan to kill Joseph was enacted? How would things have changed if the caravan of Ishmaelites had not come by at that precise time?
What about Abraham’s decision to move to the land God told him to go to? What if he had decided to stay where we was? The whole bible would have been different.
The butterfly effect is very real with us in our lives too. Think of all of the things that had to happen throughout history for you to even be born. It is mind-boggling to consider all of the coincidences and small decisions that led to your parents even knowing each other.
This is something to consider I think, especially when you get the feeling that you don’t matter that much in history. Or perhaps we struggle with a self-judgement that we aren’t doing enough of the act of charity or kindness we showed was not as great as it should have been. The fact is the no amount of kindness is too small to change he world. I will leave you with one amazing example of this.
A slave owner during the American Civil War, Moses Carver, lost three people to kidnapping. One of the kidnapped slaves, an infant boy, was found and returned to him. After the war ended Carver raised the baby as his own. George Carver grew up with Moses and eventually enrolled at Iowa State University (he became the first black student there). Later he was hired as the first black teacher there too. During his tenure he took long walks with a boy named Henry A. Wallace. The boy grew to be quite the botanist and developed some of the first corn hybrid varieties. His work caused America’s crop yield to triple. Wallace went on to become the Vice President for Roosevelt. In that office he took a trip to Mexico and saw they were struggling with wheat yields. So he suggested that agriculture research stations be developed so that hybrid corn and wheat varieties could be studied and produced. By 1944 an experimental station in Mexico was created. One of the first four people to be hired to this station was Norman Borlaug. Borlaug would, over the span of twenty years, develop wheat plant varieties that increased the Mexican wheat harvest by 600%. He went on to do the same for other countries like Turkey, Pakistan, and India. His efforts in those countries led to the saving of many lives. Some estimates put the number of people saved in excess of a billion.
One small act of kindness by Moses Carver led to the saving of over a billion lives. There really is no act of kindness too small.
God Bless