Over the past two decades, no field of scientific inquiry has had a more
striking impact across a wide array of disciplines-from biology to physics,
computing to meteorology-than that known as chaos and complexity, the study of
complex systems. Now astrophysicist John Gribbin draws on his expertise to
explore, in prose that communicates not only the wonder but the substance of
cutting-edge science, the principles behind chaos and complexity. He reveals the
remarkable ways these two revolutionary theories have been applied over the last
twenty years to explain all sorts of phenomena-from weather patterns to mass
extinctions.
Grounding these paradigm-shifting ideas in their historical context, Gribbin
also traces