Before the Butterfly
Nov. 10th, 2019 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowGeorge R. Stewart wrote _Storm_ in 1940; in the introduction to the edition I have, he mentions "the dark days of Dunkirk and the fall of France". That makes the following item intriguing to me. (An otherwise unnamed Junior Meteorologist is thinking.)
"He thought of his old professor's saying: 'A Chinaman sneezing in Shen-si may set men to shoveling snow in New York City'."
The famous hurricane-causing butterfly first appeared in the literature in the early to mid-1960s. Apparently the underlying idea was already present in the meteorological community a good deal earlier. (The general problem of sensitivity to initial conditions goes back at least to the work of Henri Poincare at the beginning of the twentieth century.)
"He thought of his old professor's saying: 'A Chinaman sneezing in Shen-si may set men to shoveling snow in New York City'."
The famous hurricane-causing butterfly first appeared in the literature in the early to mid-1960s. Apparently the underlying idea was already present in the meteorological community a good deal earlier. (The general problem of sensitivity to initial conditions goes back at least to the work of Henri Poincare at the beginning of the twentieth century.)
