The Nonlinear Universe

It has been suggested that the big questions of science are answered – that science has entered a “twilight age” where all the important knowledge is known and only the details need mopping up. A new approach to science that can answer such questions has sprung up in the past 30 years. Written in Alwyn Scott’s inimitable style – lucid and accessible – The Nonlinear Universe surveys and explores the explosion of activity in nonlinear science that began in the 1970s and 1980s and continues today. The book explains the wide-ranging implications of nonlinear phenomena for future developments in many areas of modern science, including mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience. Arguably as important as quantum theory, modern nonlinear science – and an appreciation of its implications – is essential for understanding scientific developments of the twenty-first century.