2.4.1-1 Most people think cause and effect. Something causes something else. Linear, direct. Easily.
2.4.1-2 Let's take an example. Newton got an apple in his head. That's three hundred and fifty years ago. We know the effect. The world never became the same after Newton looked at this apple and suddenly understood both. But what was the reason? Do you know when an apple falls to the ground? When should Newton preferably not sit under the apple tree, even though he fortunately did?
2.4.1-3 The apple falls when a light breeze from a butterfly in the Amazon, via a tornado in Texas and an early autumn storm in Norway makes the twig swing a little too merrily.
2.4.1-4 The story of the apple shows us one of the laws of chaos in business, that of attractors. The apple was torn the moment an attractor was outcompeted by another who was stronger. The apple was held by the stem and the twig. The twig was a force stronger than gravity - for so long. The twig was the strongest attractor.
2.4.1-5 In the fall, the apple was full of juice. It had grown and become heavier. At the same time, the twig lost some of its strength because the nutrients pulled inward into the trunk to prepare for winter. Then came this gust of wind and made the twig unstable for a moment and gravity won. Gravity became the new, strongest attractor. The apple fell. Newton had an aha experience.
2.4.1-6 But it was gravity, gravity, he suddenly understood, not the laws of chaos that determined the time of the apple's fall. The latter he attributed to
the intervention of the angels. Newton was a believer. Had he also understood this in a scientific way, that the angels had nothing to do with the matter, the world would be a completely different place today. That insight was premature. It was
not overripe.