During the 1970s various scientists, working independently of each other, found themselves puzzling over the appearance of ordered patterns in the midst of what was apparently random; everything from the weather forecast to the clustering of cars on a motorway.
Somebody came up with the term "chaos theory", and a new discipline was born. James Gleick traces its development and explains its basic tenets with care and, occasionally, wit: outright beginners will have to wrestle a bit with the language of fractals and bifurcations, but some of the concepts are eerily beautiful.
