History is like this bridge. To come to a true understanding demands the realization of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the pieces of an inseparable whole. We can no longer assume that present circumstances are fixed and shall remain so indefinitely into the future. A butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and causes rain instead of sunshine in Amherst. Chaos theory has demonstrated that slight alterations in initial conditions may yield surprisingly disparate outcomes.
Strange attractors delineate the tendency of subsequent generations to resemble their ancestors.
This phenomenon arises from the iterative nature of all non-linear dynamic systems. Life is a whole. This is the nature of non-linear dynamic systems. This is the way of the world. When we choose to embrace non-linearity, we must leave behind classical notions of absolutes and correlation.