The Lost World, a sequel to Jurassic Park (1990), re-introduces its readers to the arcane world at the borders of advanced science, where fantastic views of reality are bandied about by very serious people trying to make the next major strides into the most mysterious realms of Nature. The story opens at the Santa Fe Institute, where a gathering of top scientists from many fields is listening to mathematics Professor Ian Malcolm, resurrected from the last pages of Jurassic Park, hold forth on the application of complexity theory (also known as chaos science) to the biological problem of extinction. Whether the science of ancient life, paleontology, appeals to the average reader or not, it can be assumed that almost everyone is interested in whether modern life, particularly our own species, can hold extinction at bay.

In the middle of his lecture Malcolm is interrupted by questions from...