George Hall - teacher, historian, engineer, and computer analyst - draws upon the competing perspectives of traditional science, the exciting new science of chaos, and the burgeoning and important tenets of complexity theory, catastrophe theory, and fuzzy logic to look for a common theme. All of these perspectives, he finds, are fundamentally united by a common theme: the crucial patterns of elements and their dynamic change over time. Order - be it the growth of a foetus or the rumbling shift of continents - evolves because these patterns are themselves the blueprint and the programmes by which nature shapes our awe-inspiring universe. Hall takes this concept and carries it from the simplest phenomena to the most complex, including the evolution of the species. He then extends these concepts beyond the physical sciences, into the fascinating provinces of philosophy, computer programming, psychology, economics, political science, international relations, law, and ethics.