The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World

Science's traditional answers to the question: "How does complexity arise in nature?" are given at the beginning of this book. It shows how intelligence and human culture can be traced back to atomic structure, reducing the whole of nature to simple laws of fundamental physics. However, the book then proceeds to show that "How does complexity arise?" is really the wrong question. It proposes that a more interesting question is "Why do simple structures exist at all?". Scientific reductionism is useful but does not give the whole truth: it tells how but not why; it looks at insides but not outsides, content but not context. The subject-matter of traditional science is re-examined from a different viewpoint, focusing on the ability of complicated rules to generate simple behaviour, through the "collapse of chaos".