Most important, no one knew whether strange attractors would say anything about the deepest problem with nonlinear systems. Unlike linear systems, easily calculated and easily classified, nonlinear systems still seemed, in their essence, beyond classification—each different from every other. Scientists might begin to suspect that they shared common properties, but when it came time to make measurements and perform calculations, each nonlinear system was a world unto itself. Understanding one seemed to offer no help in understanding the next. An attractor like Lorenz’s illustrated the stability
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