Chapters 3-4 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 3: Life's Ups and Downs: Modeling wildlife populations. Nonlinear science, "the study of elephant animals." Pitchfork bifurcations and a ride on the Spree. A movie of chaos and a messianic appeal.

"The result of a mathematical development should be continuously checked against one's own intuition about what constitutes reasonable biological behavior." (Harvey J. Gold, Chap. 3, p. 57).

Ecologist and biologists use mathematical equations to create, see and interpret the world's ecosystems through computer modeling. They use a four year period to watch animals in the seas and the rainforests thrive, grow, and reproduce. However, no one is sure how many species exist - is it five million or fifty million? Biologists and ecologists study different aspects of the natural world using elementary tools.

"In the emergence of chaos as a new science in the 1970s, ecologists were destined to play...