Provenza, who his dean calls "the most unlikely rebel you'll ever meet," says the classical Newtonian notion of cause-and-effect must be supplemented with a fact of life Provenza calls "self-organization." Life is constant transformation, or, as the philosopher said more than 2,000 years ago: The only constant in life is change.

Newton and libraries full of what scientists have found out since that famous bonk on the head would propose that nature is a big clock and if science can properly understand the gears and how they interconnect, humans will understand, predict and control it.

Patterns definitely occur, Provenza says. Seasons come and go, and the likely behavior of a storm at certain times of the year can be fairly accurately predicted. Ultimately, the weather behaves in a less than expected way, despite the tremendous and remarkable effort of science and technology to forecast it. Salt Lake's weather patterns and modern technology gave not even a second's warning that a tornado would touch down about noon on Aug. 11, 1999.

Weather is just one force Provenza takes into account in conducting research on the behavior of foraging animals. Math and physics researchers may predict that Provenza's research into the to and fro of rangeland livestock is mundane and perhaps irrelevant. But they would be as off the mark as the weatherman that August afternoon.

His nearly 30 years of looking at how sheep and cows "make a living" has led to some startling revelations of how all creatures of habit — humans included — survive in a world whose only habit is change.

"Habits provide a sense of predictably and security in an unpredictable and dangerous place," Provenza says.

The deeper question — the one that informs Provenza's research — is why creatures will stick to old habits or do their best — even die trying — to hang on to something familiar when change comes along.

Life for all animals, humans included, is a rock and hard place, he says. In between, the power of habit and the force of change are constantly colliding. The ongoing crash can be seen in livestock walking a fence to get "home" after being moved to a new range or pasture. It can be seen in the face of a lost and hungry American tourist who has just spotted a McDonald's in a foreign country.

The best that both the herbivore and tourist can do is act based on past experience in an attempt to find order or comfort in a strange situation, he says.