In the late 1980s and early 1990s,

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, chaos theory became a pop culture phenomenon, with graphic designs of strange attractors and colorful fractals appearing on tee shirts and posters and with phrases like “the butterfly effect” entering everyday speech. Michael Crichton’s 1990 mega-bestseller Jurassic Park and the films based on it epitomize the influence of chaos theory on popular culture. Because terms such as “chaos” and “determinism” have philosophical as well as scientific resonance, a great deal of excitement permeated cultural studies about this apparent paradigm shift in scientific thinking. A downside to this excitement was the possibility that chaos theory would be simply a passing fad, and some scholars who initially embraced its possibilities did move on to other theoretical frontiers. In the decade and a half since it burst onto the scene, however, chaos theory has demonstrated that it is not simply a passing fad but a viable and important means for generating new insights within all the disciplines.