They were physicists, biologists, chemists and mathematicians but they were all seeking one thing: connections between different kinds of irregularity.

Physiologists found a surprising order in the chaos that develops in the human heart, the prime cause of a sudden, unexplained death. Ecologists explored the rise and fall of gypsy moth populations. Economists dug out old stock price data and tried a new kind of analysis. The insights that emerged led directly into the natural world- the shapes of clouds, the paths of lightning, the microscopic intertwining of blood vessels, the galactic clustering of stars. (Gleick 32)

When most natural systems are modeled, their mathematical representations do not produce straight lines on graphs; these systems outputs are extremely difficult to predict. Before the chaos theory was developed, most scientists studied nature and other random things using linear systems. Starting with the work of Sir Isaac Newton, physics has provided a process for modeling nature, and the mathematical equations associated with it have all been linear. When a study resulted in strange answers, the failure was blamed on experimental error or noise.

Classical science has ended, and chaos has begun. With more and more research into this young science it would be possible for us to make predictions on what will come in the future. Though it is one of the youngest sciences, the Chaos Theory holds great promise in the fields of meteorology, physics, mathematics, and just about anything else you can think of. This science also has a chance to let scientist extrapolate information of what will happen to possible allow us to find out what happen in the past.

Chaos breaks across the lines that separate scientific disciplines. Because it is a science of the global nature of systems, it has brought together thinkers from fields that have been widely separated...Chaos poses problems that defy accepted ways of working in science. It makes strong claims about the universal behavior of complexity. The first Chaos theorists, the scientists who set the discipline in motion, shared certain sensibilities. They had an eye for pattern, especially pattern that appeared on different scales at the same time. They had a taste for randomness and complexity, for jagged edges and sudden leaps. Believers in chaos-- and they sometimes call themselves believers, or converts, or evangelists--speculate about determinism and free will, about evolution, about the nature of conscious intelligence. They feel that they are turning back a trend in science towards reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quarks, chromosomes, or neutrons. They believe that they are looking for the whole. (Gleick 137)

The Complexity Theory has developed from mathematics, biology, and chemistry, but mostly from physics and particularly thermodynamics, the study of turbulence leading to the understanding of self-organizing systems and system states (equilibrium, near equilibrium, the edge of chaos, and chaos). "The concept of entropy is actually the physicists application of the concept of evolution to physical systems. The greater the entropy of a system, the more highly evolved is the system."(Hilborn 486) The Complexity theory is also having a major impact on quantum physics and attempts to reconcile the chaos of quantum physics with the predictability of Newton's universe.

After he started looking, chaos seemed to be everywhere. A flag snaps back and forth in the wind. A dripping faucet changes from a steady pattern to a random one. A rising column of smoke disappears into random swirls. (Dupre 19)

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Approximate Word count = 2667
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)