ごく単純な因果システムを含め、身の回りのどのシステムにもカオスは存在し得て、予測不可能な振る舞いを示したり、ときには大きく異なる結果を生じさせます。理解が進むにつれ、カオス理論は工学や地球温暖化、政治をはじめ、人間の行動や株式投機にまでさまざまな形で適用されるようになりました。哲学、文学、数学なども用いながら、カオス理論についてわかりやすく解説します。
   

• Chaos theory is one of the most exciting and fast-growing areas of mathematics and physical science today.
• It unifies simplicity and complexity, and order and randomness, to give us a new understanding of a physical processes and events.
• Ideal for the non-mathematician - Leonard Smith uses accessible examples and terms to give the reader a full understanding of this exciting field.

  
Chaos exists in systems all around us. Even the simplest system of cause and effect can be subject to chaos, denying us accurate predictions of its behaviour, and sometimes giving rise to astonishing structures of large-scale order. Our growing understanding of Chaos Theory is having fascinating applications in the real world - from technology to global warming, politics, human behaviour, and even gambling on the stock market.
 
Leonard Smith shows that we all have an intuitive understanding of chaotic systems. He uses accessible maths and physics (replacing complex equations with simple examples like pendulums, railway lines, and tossing coins) to explain the theory, and points to numerous examples in philosophy and literature (Edgar Allen Poe, Chang-Tzu, Arthur Conan Doyle) that illuminate the problems. The beauty of fractal patterns and their relation to chaos, as well as the history of chaos, and its uses in the real world and implications for the philosophy of science are all discussed in this Very Short Introduction.