Overview
Chaos theory has captured scientific and popular attention. What began as the discovery of randomness in simple physical systems has become a widespread fascination with "chaotic" models of everything from business cycles to brainwaves to heart attacks. But what exactly does this explosion of new research into chaotic phenomena mean for our understanding of the world? In this timely book, Stephen Kellert takes the first sustained look at the broad intellectual and philosophical questions raised by recent advances in chaos theory—its implications for science as a source of knowledge and for the very meaning of that knowledge itself.Clear, concise, and accessible to the nonspecialist, In the Wake of Chaos explains the profound challenge of chaos theory to the traditional concepts of science: law, predictability, understanding, and control. Where traditional science is concerned with discrete facts and events, and with rigorous theories of why things happen, in chaos the emphasis is on patterns, behaviors, and models of how things happen. The central insight of chaos theory--that systems governed by mathematically simple equations can exhibit elaborate, even unpredictable behavior--is explored in lucid detail. But Kellert provides something more than a superb introduction to chaos theory: he shows what happens when effective marketing meets the practice of science. This book is a brilliant case study in the coming of age of a new science. Index included. One table, 14 line drawings.