Recently I was reading a book on
CHAOS . It tells a story about the predicament of a few Physicists/ Mathematicians
/
Scientists who wanted to do research in a new area and the system of the laboratory (say Los Alamos) was pressing them hard towards the routine Jobs. A peculiarity they observed in "
Nature" and natural phenomena that they do not move in a set pattern obeying the exact laws of physics/biology/chemistry or say
Science . They are perturbed in a non-linear way and this perturbation leads to a variety of new happenings which can not be explained by the pure laws of science. The germination of a seed and later turning into plant with leaves/roots/branches which are set in a random manner but a large scaleorder also exists side by side. The author who is a Journalist by profession but a science-man by his education (at Harvard) travelled widely ,met a large number of scientists working in similar areas and it is a wonder that he could collect the gems from such a large stack of writings in various journals ,I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who likes to understand this world of ours.
Postscript on 19 th November 2006: Regret to find that the name of the author
is incorrect. the actual name is James Gleick