Guest Speaker: Andy Fletcher - Chaos & Covid

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colored photo of H1N1 virus particles as viewed under a microscope
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Embracing Possibility challenges us to accept uncertainty and unpredictability. This program will dive deep into this challenge by examining Chaos Theory and how it relates to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

From Andy:

Chaos Theory is all about the Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect tells us that sometimes something as small as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can set off a cascade of events that could not have been predicted or anticipated. And thus, weather is unpredictable. Economics is unpredictable. The direction the universe is going is unpredictable. The direction a particle is going is unpredictable. Any dynamic system is unpredictable. Creation itself is unpredictable, no matter how much we might want it to be otherwise. History is unpredictable. People are unpredictable. And Pandemics are unpredictable. We can predict that we’ll continue to have them at regular intervals, and we can make general predictions about what might happen. But we cannot predict when they will arrive, who they will impact, the nature of the impact, how they will mutate - in short, nearly everything. So a guy eats a bad bat in Wuhan, and the world falls apart.

Andy Fletcher has been speaking on science in nearly 300 high schools since 1991 in 43 countries, along with several universities (including Cambridge U in the UK), a number of churches, and a passel of conferences, not to mention a small fleet of cruise ships.  He is the head of Life, the Universe and Everything, Inc., an educational non-profit. He graduated from the AISZ in Zurich, attended universities in Texas and Japan before graduating from USC in LA with a BA in history, a math major, and minors in English Literature, Philosophy, and Japanese. Writer, speaker, humorist, musician, and photographer, he is really only at home when he’s not at home. He’s written 8 books and a host of articles and radio commentaries, and has filmed his talks a number of times. Books and film series available on request.

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