並列摘要
This article introduces the concept of ＂chaos＂; and reviews its history, development, and prospects. The concept of chaos can be traced back to ancient times, while the modern scientific chaos theory started from the discovery of the ＂butterfly effect＂ by meteorologist Lorenz in the 1960s. Then, it has been developed by many scientists, especially by mathematicians Tien-Yien Li and James Yorke with their ＂period three implies chaos＂ theory and by biologist Robert May with his complexity model and theory on ecosystems. Today, the scientific theory of chaos has become more mature, and it has found potential applications in some engineering technologies such as information hiding and fluid mixing.