In 1968 the meteorologist Ed Lorenz entered data into a computer and arrived at a result. When he entered the same data into the computer again, to check his work, he arrived at a drastically different result. The cause was not human error, but a minor shift in how the computer dealt with rounding the never-ending decimal places created by the data. This small change in the initial conditions had a major impact on his system. This led Ed Lorenz to write his famous paper on the Butterfly Effect, and gave our culture a better understanding of mathematical Chaos. This mathematics taught us to look beyond proximate causalities with the knowledge that small differences in initial conditions lead to drastically different results.
Humanity was then forced to consider again what it had ignored after Poincare’s investigation of three bodied systems at the turn of the century. There can be no control over complex dynamical systems by some ubiquitous structure. To think our financial, political, or ecological systems can be controlled entirely by man made institutions is a foolish paternalistic trend in human intellectual history. If a butterfly’s wing could be a tipping point, then we are all extraordinarily helpless, and, paradoxically, we are all extraordinarily power.
The belief that humanity sits on top of some great hierarchical chain of being has its roots deep in history. The realization that we cannot sit above nature and control our ecosystem has had a devastating effect on our ego. However, if we can accept that our place is not above the system, but inside it, then we can begin to play within it.
As a soccer player for twenty-five years, and coach for five, I learned that I cannot take two forty-five minute halves as a closed system and closely choreograph them second by second. I could not practice or instruct my players, as I could a dance, with step-by-step instructions for the full ninety minutes; the game’s many variables make it chaotic. A soccer game is dynamic and cannot be predicted or rehearsed. The best I could hope for is to teach my players the skills necessary to react within an unpredictable environment, and dwell in the ambiguity of the impeding, and mysterious, next few seconds of play.
As a teacher of ninth grade students the past seven years, I prepared fifteen year olds to enter a work force in, on average, eight years from the time we met. I have come to realize that the best thing I can teach is, similar to my soccer players, the ability to react in a world that changes day-to-day. Moreover, when we are faced with a system so large that it seems as though no small change can have an effect, and when we accept our role within this system, we can focus on our reactions to the changes around us. Rather than seek one more technological advancement, or form some new governing body to oversee and protect the entire earth, we can focus on our local communities—on the ground in front of us.
Right now, I am not fit to match that standard of education. I rely too heavily on my knowledge base and teach, more often than not, content rather than skills. Even the word “teacher” is harmful because it implies this paternalistic mentality that I have something that should be taught. The process of learning outweighs the material being taught. The ability to recognize patterns, find quality information in a sea of digital noise, and collaborate in meaningful ways with like-minded and adversarial individuals alike are the pass, trap, and shoot of the twenty-first century intellectual world.
In Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog a lone intellectual stands atop a mountain looking out over the world. He is at once small in comparison to the vast landscape and large in his ability to view and comprehend what stands in front of him. In order to perceive this landscape of mountains and clouds, he needed only to ascend one mountain. When I swim in the Ocean I need not tackle the full force of the ocean, but simply move the water two feet in front of me to keep afloat. Just as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, seemingly insignificant, can have an impact, the movement and cultivation of the earth ten feet in front of us allows us to play within a system filled with innumerable variables. My amateur study of ecological systems and the culture of food emphasize certain skill sets and modes of thinking that will make me a better facilitator of learning.
For these reasons I will be studying food science and culture at the University of Gastronomic Sciences next year in the Piedmont Region of Italy—to turn that amateur study into something serious, to reflect upon blending learning environments that will teach inquiry rather than content (but of course content in the process), and write about all of it to organize my thoughts.
This is going to be delicious.