In the 1960s, a small group of radical thinkers upset the rigid foundation of modern scientific thinking by placing new importance on the tiny experimental irregularities that scientists had long learned to ignore. Miniscule differences in data, they said, would eventually produce massive ones—and complex systems like the weather, economics, and human behavior suddenly became clearer and more beautiful than they had ever been before.

 

In this updated version of his seminal work, James Gleick lays out that new vision of a chaotic universe. Interviews with leading theoreticians, a video introduction from the author, and motion graphics depicting concepts such as the famous Lorenz attractor—the concept that birthed chaos theory—complement Gleick’s elegant prose. Never before has chaos been so easy to grasp.