Chaos is the intrinsic probabilistic behavioural texture of the universe. It forms the ever-present environmental conditions within which the observable broad processes of movement, growth and evolution take place. The cosmos was not formed from chaos. The cosmos appears to an awareness as form within the context of chaotic structure. It is an infinitely multiple lattice of interacting and complexifying structures each of which may induce perturbations in the others.

The defining property of the universe is that it's structures are subject to perturbations and intrusions, and are not absolutely mathematically predictable. This sporadic nature appears wherever one looks; in the physical clouds and turbulence of the air, in the disintegration of radioactive elements, in the random arrival of cosmic rays and the variations of genetic mutation. It is even to be recognized in such diverse arenas as the uncertainly principle of sub-atomic physics, the exceptions to the rules of the grammar of a language and the predictability of the germination of beetroot seeds.

There are irregularities at every level of shape, motion or structure, so that attempting to absolutely conceptualize a form is impossible. The apparent form of a structure or an entity at one scale, becomes a different form at another scale. The form of any living things for instance, is that conceptual simplification which an awareness abstracts from its presentation at a particular scaling. But as increasing detail is sought... with increasing magnifications for example... so the original form complexifies and any ultimate and definitive appreciation of the form becomes ever more elusive. The general appreciation of the form of 'treeness'... which may be no more than a simple catalogue of trunk shape, branch form, leaf structure, root pattern, etc at a macro level... becomes increasingly more complexified as one investigates the formal aspects of bark and cambium layers and then cells and genes and molecules and so on. At every scale, any form that is imposed upon the entity under consideration, will be subject to disorders significant at that scale. Every tree has broken or irregular branches, bark invaded by lichen and eaten by insects, and so on. In looking for form, one has to simplify and overlook the structural irregularities.

The patterns that mathematics has chosen to call chaotic, are formal simplifications of what had formerly been deemed to be probabilistic predictability. Certain non-linear feedback systems of precarious stability which have exhibited seemingly unpredictable and catastrophic behaviour have been shown to exhibit hitherto unsuspected structures. Never-the-less the form of these structures, like any imposed forms at any presumed level of complexity, are only obtained by imposing simplifications onto the observedly infinitely intricate. No system has ever been absolutely predictable by the imposition of a theoretical model. There has always been error and uncertainty induced by the instability of the environment. When these influences have been contrived to be insignificant, it has been tempting to declare that the system was predictable or deterministic, but in fact they never were. As soon as the haphazard disturbances of the environment became more significant and any positive feedback became more influential, then the presumed stability of the system adopted a mode of behaviour which was characterised by a seemingly random instability and unpredictability.

Chaos is intrinsic to cosmic processes. The random cumulative perturbations of interstellar materials precipitate the processes which generate the diverse macro objects of galaxies, quasars, solar systems and the like. Biological entities only evolve because of the chaotic essence whereby their mutations prove to be beneficial or otherwise. Chaos is not to be supposed as some kind of imperfect and deficient state. Chaos is the very essence and driving impetus of the cosmos.