The most important thing that I'm finding about reading the book is how much I had been looking for it. Gleick said that regular science had been occupied showing the world that abstract, normalized equations are the best way to look at the universe, and situations where small perturbations lead to large results (going against genreal 'conservation of x' theories) should be ignored, when it seems that the opposite may be true.
"Relativity eliminated the Newtonian illusion of absolute space and time; quantum theory eliminated the Newtonian dream of a controllable measurement process; and chaos eliminates the Laplacian fantasy of deterministic predictability."
-Joseph Ford (1989) "What is Chaos, that we should be mindful of it?" In Paul Davies' The New Physics
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
-Leo Tolstoy
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