Everyday Chaos

"Trying to understand a system with multiple interacting components - the weather, for example, or the human body, or the stock market - means dealing with two factors: chaos and complexity. If we don't understand these two essential subjects, we can't understand the real world"--Back cover.

Brian Clegg is an award-winning popular science writer and the author of more than thirty books, including A Brief History of Infinity, Dice World, and Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Hidden 95% of the Universe.

Introduction...6 Clockwork and chaos....8 Newton's intractable motions and runaway feedback.....54 Weather worries and chaotic butterflies....126 Strange attractors and immeasurable distances....153 Stock market crashes and super hits....183 Harnessing chaos.....210 Complexity and emergence....238 Welcome to chaos.....250 Further reading.....252 Index.....254 Acknowledgments....256