Tulip Mania
The 17th century was the period during the Dutch Golden Age, when the Dutch become an economic and military power. The Dutch controlled the seas and had a monopoly on spice trade. The speculative bubble in the prices of a Tulip bulb, a desired commodity, caused a mania, which has represented everything speculative, everything bubble, everything madness, everything irrational, everything which Newton shouldn’t have done [He lost money in the bubble], but Tulip mania has never been seen as the extension of a chaotic information system which took the society for a ride. Society understands the event as psychological herding, but rarely do we look at historical events as an extension of informational realms that operate at biological, social and environmental levels. Information has always been seen as a perspective defining prism that helps us focus through it, but never on it.
Tulip Breaking Virus
The Tulips traveled from the Ottoman Empire to Vienna to Netherlands, where the botanist Carolus Clusius in 1530s found out that Tulips could not only handle the harsher conditions of the Low Countries but also exhibited ‘Breaking’, a phenomenon where the color of the Tulip frayed, causing it to display a fascinating dynamic art. Much later in 1928, Dorothy Mary Cayley, discovered the Tulip Breaking Virus. Cayley discovered that by mechanically transferring infected tissue from broken bulbs to healthy bulbs during their dormant state, the virus that caused the break in color was also transferred. The virus transmitted through the sap was probably transferred by an insect. The degree of breaking was proportional to the amount of infected tissue introduced.
Asexual Aphids
Aphids are top destructive insect pests found in temperate regions. They asexually reproduce and multiply. And their sap sucking weakens the plant while they nurture viruses. The virus was eventually proved to be transferred by aphids, which transmitted the virus between stored Tulip bulbs. The viruses become attached to the tip of the stylet in the insect's mouthparts, making it easy to inoculate other plants. The virus does not affect the seed that produces a bulb, only the bulb itself, its leaves and blooms. The timing of virus spread was correlated with aphid population and weather conditions.
Dairying Ants
Dairying ants have a loving relationship with aphids. They protect aphids from predators like lady bugs while tending them for their honeydew secretions. The ants “milk” the aphids for this sticky rasin by stroking their abdomen, a relationship of convenient efficiency.
Seeds To Bulbs To Market
Seeds take a decade to form a flowering bulb and hence cultivating the most appealing varieties takes years. In the Northern Hemisphere, Tulips bloom in April and May for about one week. During the plant's dormant phase from June to September, bulbs could be uprooted for trade. This was the time when the unregulated market thrived driven by the early workings of modern finance.
Flea And The Plague
Along with the profiting ships, driving the economic boom, came the rats, who brought with them the fleas, which spreaded the disease. Plague [from animals to humans] had killed 60% of Europeans in the 14th century. The Bubonic plague had killed a fifth of the population in Amsterdam while the Tulip mania was peaking. The disease brought fear and dampened sentiment.
Facts To Fiction And Back
The longer we go back in time, the harder it is to separate fact from fiction or have any control on when fiction transforms into a fact. The plague was sometimes seen as inducing risky speculation, as people acquired more money from dead relatives. While at other times, there was no interest in flowers and the fear of plague, kept people indoor. On February 3, 1636, a bulb didn’t sell at an auction in the Dutch city of Haarlem—and that failure to sell caused prices to drop.
There were many other stories that have come to be challenged, like the story of sailor who was imprisoned because he mistook a Tulip for an onion [and ate it]. And a bulb named Semper Augustus, notable for its flame-like white and red petals, that sold for more than the cost of a mansion. With so many stories around, authors have questioned the size of bankruptcy and the real economic damage.
Probability, Clovers, And Lucky Charms
The story of Tulip is actually a story of probability that can be understood by the four-leaf clover, a rare variation of the common three-leaf clover, considered as a sign of good luck [1640s]. Surveys of approximately 7 million clovers found the frequency to be about 5000 to 1. The frequency of a five-leaf clover is 24,400 to 1, and of a six-leaf clover is 312,500 to 1. This probability has not deterred collectors. The most leaves ever found on a single clover stem is 56 in 2009.
The relative rarity is yet again connected to a recessive gene appearing at a low frequency. The other leaf traits, the red fleck mark and red midrib, a herringbone pattern that streaks down the center of each leaflet in a bold red color, resolve a century-old question as to whether these leaf traits were controlled by one gene or two separate genes. White clover has many genes that affect leaf color and shape. These traits can be quite attractive, particularly if combined with others, and can turn clover into an ornamental plant for use in flower beds. The cult of clovers has got some U.S. farms to specialize in producing genetically engineered four-leaf clovers [10,000 a day] to be packaged as "lucky charms".
Information Realms
Rarity is based on a complex information system. Complexity can be beautiful like a Tulip or a clover. Beauty has a utility, sometimes it has nectar [ant food]. This value [sometimes economic] attracts communities of agents [human or other species], which lead to farming, manufacturing, storytelling and eventually to an exhaustion as the value diminishes. There are other extraneous factors or agents [like fleas] which disrupt the system and bring it down.
Information runs in many realms, from subatomic to cognitive to spatial to temporal. Every realm interprets the information with its own tools and metrics. Though at an aggregate level, the information is totally unpredictable, random and chaotic, each realm perceives a different causality, living in a make-believe world, that what it sees is the reality. The momentum lasts for a certain time, before the reality transforms into another world.
Economic systems are interconnected with biological, cognitive, quantum and many other systems. The information complex is not fragmented across these systems. This is why comprehending a layer of information for its characteristics or content is like a colourful snapshot from a Kaleidoscope, that lasts only till the time it is viewed, as it continues to evolve, transform and sometime change dramatically.
The Conceptual Age, the age beyond Information Age changes this archaic perception as it focuses on understanding the prism rather than seeing through it, giving society a new way to look at nature and complexity, and not be lost in a wonderland.
Bibliography
Tulip Mania, Wikipedia
Tulip Breaking Virus, Wikipedia
Controlling Aphids and ants, Gardening Knowhow, 2022
The real story of the Dutch Tulip Bubble is even more fascinating than the myth, Barrons, 2019
Bubonic Plague, Cleveland Clinic, 2021
Four leaf clover, Wikipedia
Tulip mania and the economic bubbles, The University of Melbourne, 2017
There never was real Tulip fever, Smithsonian Magazine, 2017