The big thinkers at Aperture explore the butterfly effect and the principles of chaos theory.

A monarch butterfly (Dannaux plexippus) flaps its wings in Piedra Herrada Sanctuary, Mexico. Might this start a chain of events that results in a tornado in Texas? Photograph by Jaime Rojo In 1961, ...

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Might sound like the type of question posed by science fiction explorers to reveal the precarity of time travel, but in ...

Chaos theory says that a tiny, insignificant event or circumstance can have outsized influence in shaping the way a large, complex system evolves into the future. Many people are familiar with this so ...

Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder of the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, offers a history of complexity science and explores the challenges of applying its insights to ...

Milad Haghani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

In 1961, MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was inputting numbers into a weather prediction program. His model was based on a dozen variables, the value of one being .506127. When he ran the model again, ...