Chaos in Biology

Abstract

Chaos, the mathematical concept, was rediscovered, explicated, and applied in the mid-1960s and 70s (Lorenz 1963; May 1974) and has since then been broadly assimilated into contemporary Western culture. (Of course, the concept of social and political chaos has been well-known to even casual observers of contemporary events for a long time.) An informative, brief history of mathematical chaos was given by Holton and May (1990). Although the word is encountered frequently, as with similar overarching and broadly applicable concepts such as relativity, Darwinism, or connectionism, the concept of chaos is sometimes only vaguely understood. In this chapter, we have the very modest goal of giving a qualitative, informal exposition of some of the underlying concepts plus a few examples. Many fine books on the subject exist ranging from the popular (Gleick 1987) to the mathematical (e.g., Guckenheimer and Holmes 1990, Hilborn 1994).