Chapter 25Conglomerations of people — towns, cities, countries — are strange. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, thousands live their lives in a continual flurry of endlessly interweaving and varying activities, yet the whole changes little. The ceaseless bustle of ordinary people living ordinary lives somehow conjures into being a dynamic equilibrium which, once established, is seemingly immune to the countless inner changes that comprise it. Within this shifting stability grows the perception that cause and effect are related in extent as well as by their very nature; a small cause yields a small effect, a large cause, a large effect. Yet, like many apparently obvious perceptions, this is flawed. There are times when a body which has indeed demonstrated a small effect to a small
