This fascinating study of chaos and order in the universe marks a new direction in scientific approaches to these areas. Rejecting Laplacian notions of `meaningless', coincidental order and of a ruling tendency towards dissolution and chaos, Layzer draws physics, biology, chemistry, and astronomy into a fluid philosophy of order, able to accommodate the individual act and random event without causing structural breakdown.Layzer manages to be both entertaining and very convincing at the same time. Among the intriguing side issues he brings up are a new theory for the origins of the universe and a physical explanation for why off-key musical notes jar.