Applied Philosophy

We can extract linear trends, of growth and decline, in history (see The Story of Europe) but at a closer look it seems that history moves in a non-linear line. This expression is used, these days, very widely; people say that things do not go in a straight line, but what does that mean exactly?

In this post we will be looking at a graph that represents non-linear development. This graph is not the representation of a quantity but rather a quality, this is very important to understand and some might find it difficult to comprehend but in reality we experience this duality of quantity and quality on daily basis without noticing. Let us now examine a graph of non-linear historical development:
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Here are some graphs that I find useful in visualising some philosophical points.

First are five graphs of bifurcation:
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Here are more graphs that I have been extracting from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2007 (available as an MS Excel workbook on the Internet at: http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview).

Graph 10: This graph shows oil production in different parts of the world, which has experienced significant decline. It plots total US production (thousands of barrels per day-right side) and the total production of Australia, UK and Norway (thousands of barrels per day-left side) from 1965 to 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

Reading BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2007 (available as an MS Excel workbook on the Internet at: http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview), I was forced to convert the raw data into graphs to make any sense of them; this post contains these graphs.The graphs are presented without any conclusions or arguments, just an explanation of the data.

Graph 1: First we start with the price of oil. Two prices are plotted ($-left side) one for nominal price and the other inflation-adjusted price from 1861 to 2006.
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The so-called ‘butterfly effect’ is a very important scientific concept that the general public should be aware of, unfortunately it has been popularised using the obligatory oversimplified mental image of a butterfly causing a storm, etc.

Those kinds of oversimplifications-that has been popular since Sputnik made the headlines-are favoured by the journalists who copy them from Wikipedia without really understanding them and paste them into their articles to add some padding and give the appearance of understanding where there is none. If one does not understand the concept beforehand he will not be helped by these mental images that simplify too much and inform too little.

But the concept remains important and has to be convoyed to those who wouldn’t understand the mathematical definition, so what is the alternative to the oversimplified mental image? How about a simple image?
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