Until the late twentieth century, t

Until the late twentieth century, the clockwork hegemony initiated by classical physics led scientists to dismiss dynamical systems whose behavior was not predictable, such as weather or—a more modest object of study—a dripping faucet with an increased flow rate. Kellert claims that “the appeal of stable periodic motion was somehow so great that physicists began to see everything as a clock, to the extent that nonperiodic behavior was denied or dismissed.”25 Certainly, scientists were aware that such unpredictable behavior occurred in the physical world, but they saw it as aberrant. Over the past several decades, however, systems whose behavior cannot be predicted have become significant objects of study as scientists acknowledge the prevalence of deterministic chaos in the natural world.