Chaos: Making a New Science

by James Gleick

As he saw it, the problem was conceptual. Traditional methods for treating this “most unstable, dynamic, infinite-dimensional machine” were linear and reductionist. “The underlying paradigm remains: one gene → one peptide → one enzyme → one neurotransmitter → one receptor → one animal behavior → one clinical syndrome → one drug → one clinical rating scale. It dominates almost all research and treatment in psychopharmacology. More than 50 transmitters, thousands of cell types, complex electromagnetic phenomenology, and continuous instability based autonomous activity at all levels, from proteins to the electroencephalogram—and still the brain is thought of as a chemical point-to–point switchboard.” To someone exposed to the world of nonlinear dynamics the response could only be: How naïve. Mandell urged his colleagues to understand the flowing geometries that sustain complex systems like the mind.