this - is all so new!
In the 1970s, scientists for the first time had powerful high-speed computers that could help them tackle and solve nonlinear equations. In doing so, they devised a number of techniques, a new kind of mathematical language that revealed very surprising patterns underneath the seemingly chaotic behavior of nonlinear systems, an underlying order beneath the seeming chaos. Indeed, chaos theory is really a theory of order, but of a new kind of order that is revealed by this new mathematics.
This is very important for a theory of living systems, because the networks that are the basic pattern of all living systems are also very complex. To describe these networks mathematically, you need nonlinear equations and techniques, and since the 1970s we have these techniques at our disposal. During the the 1970s, the strong interest in nonlinear phenomena generated a whole series of new and powerful theories that describe various aspects of living systems. These theories, which I discuss in some detail in the book, form the components of my own synthesis of the new conception of life.
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