The "Macrocosmos, Microcosmos" exhibit mounted on pre-1906-earthquake brick walls, the sound of hard rain on the skylight, electric lights dimming erratically, the kerosene lamp backup flickering on the table, all provided a magical setting for Ralph Abraham to discuss chaos. He came with no set patter but allowed audience questions to shape the direction of the talk.

The concept of Chaos as mathematicians use it is not the same as we normally use the word, Abraham told us. It is not "disorder that you don't understand." Nor is it simply what the Greeks taught, the "space between earth and the heavens."

McCullough's challenge is to assess what has been won and lost because of the revolutionary change in working materials from physical substance to information networks. At first, the persistence of craft seems implausible. Craft requires touch-interplay between maker and material. By contrast, the remote operation of mouse and keyboard offers only impoverished control over one's medium.

Order! The order that society has projected onto nature has trashed the environment in the process. Chaos is a method to deconstruct it to reveal the order that really exists. "What chaos theory is trying to do," declared Abraham, "is to develop a cognitive strategy to visualize and compute the spoken language of nature, in order to live more harmoniously with it."

Abraham, who began developing the mathematics of what he called "dynamical systems" in the 1960s, is one of the early adventurers into the field of chaos. His aim has been to study space-time patterns in a new way, which better than previous methods moves us out toward the horizon of complexity ("where it gets really messy").

One fundamental idea is that of bifurcation. An equation called a seed creates a tree which is a pattern graphed most often by computer. This is a fractal-like process. The pattern gradually changes as the seed is given slightly different beginning values. Suddenly, a saltation, a large jump, a sudden forking in the curve, appears. This is the bifurcation.

The fascination is for the infinite transformations possible. Patterns mapped on supercomputers, like natural ones, never repeat exactly. Similar to the way in which the creative impulse allows for a certain amount of apparent disorder.

Applications? One is the geometric modeling of an enormous electric power grid in Japan (as he said this, the gallery's lights faltered slightly). Although the engineering company chose not to make use of the chaos analysis, two other areas of success have been in human physiology and population studies.

Abraham was asked about chaos, psychedelic agents and brain function. He replied with some passion, "There are 'heads' like me in the math world who are very interested in the cortex, what cells connect to what, and how a drug changes the dynamics, the strength of connections between them. I'm into it, it's my life, but just as a problem, it's good for modeling some important stuff, mimicking nature."

He recommended the new book by Irving Laslow, Whispering Pond, which postulates an immaterial field that interacts with minds and connects "seeds" in it. It may have behavioral rules, like fluid mechanics and explain synchronicities.

"What is the status of chaos theory in the math world?" he was asked. "The math profession is hoping chaos will just go away, but--levees boil before they burst. This field of math is boiling!". Abraham and his colleagues are bringing their results to the rest of us, hoping it will promote cultural change, and hoping that a backlash by lovers of imposed order won't kill it. He talked about an international gathering in Graz in 1989 which featured art and music inspired by chaos. "It looked and sounded and felt different. A new paradigm will arrive at the door of science last. The scientists will find it out from the artists."

About his own book, Chaos, Gaia, Eros, he said briefly that it was about the influence of the Greeks' most important religious tradition, that of Orphism, on modern thought.

I must outline the book's thesis, for it ties in well with the next talk: In it, Abraham describes early partnership-Goddess cultures, in contrast with the model in which dominators worship a monotheistic male deity, more prevalent today. The Orphic tradition bore the influence of goddess cultures that preceded it, and its sacred trinity was "Chaos, Gaia, Eros."

This book describes the modern use of the words chaos, gaia, and erodynamics in new scientific disciplines. Curiously enough, practitioners in mathematics/physics, ecology and behavioral sciences independently chose these names. Abraham considered this a good omen.

Leonard Shlain, author of Art and Physics, also spoke to us of male-deity cultures and the recent resurgence of values considered feminine. He expects his latest book project, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess, to be out in 1998. He, however, sees the origin of male domination and its recent erosion somewhat differently. When humans first turned from hunting to agriculture, women gained status. Goddesses, egalitarianism and female lineage were the rule. This disappeared completely about 3,000 BCE. Why?

He disputes the widely-held view that horse-riding invaders swept down from the steppes and slew the Goddess cultures because "the history of such invaders is that they adopt the more sophisticated culture."

Shlain claims that ÒThe new misogynist societies were based on writing. The first societies to use writing had clumsy systems, only known by a priestly few. The big change, with the suppression of goddess worship, came with the invention of the alphabet, when many men learned to read (and women were "not expected" to do so). With it came holy books and patriarchy. Is it an accident,Ó Shlain asked, Òthat the first four of the Ten Commandments are to promote monotheism and writing over "graven images"?Ó

Brain function enters into this. The human brain size at birth is limited by the hole of the birth canal. To expand function without bulk, the hemispheres of the brain have taken on different roles--in this we're unique. The left brain specialized in time-related (linear) functions, good for tracking animals, the male specialty. Whereas the woman's talents were right brain, pictorial, emotional and nurturing, men found being cold-blooded advantageous for slaying lovable animals. Left brain dominates right hand, the hand that plunges the knife.

The hand that kills writes, Law and science are left-brain Shlain asserted and surprised us by observing that in rustic Sparta, where it was illegal to set the laws in writing, women actually fared better than in cultivated Athens.

Early Christians valued women, but as it grew into a religion of texts and doctrinal disputes, women's status fell. Women gained ascendancy again in the illiterate Dark Ages with the cult of Mary, chivalry, and the prominence of brilliant women in holy orders.

With the invention of printing and the sudden surge in literacy, as with introduction of the alphabet before it, brought a wave of misogyny. Protestants forswore images and the worship of Mary. Both Catholics and Protestants spent the 15th through the 17th centuries murdering hundreds of thousands of "witches." "Kill your wise women?? Any other culture in the world would have thought this was nuts!"

Images are now back. Photoreproduction in all its forms has done the same for images as writing did for words. No contemporary book is as influential as images of the mushroom cloud, the Earth from space or the fetus sucking its thumb. Art (including entertainment and advertising) is more important than the written word. "The content doesn't matter as much as the use of the neglected, affective portion of the brain. Feminism goes with the iconic society. The first TV generation is the one that burned bras."

He closed with an unsettling remark: "The introduction of a new communications technology drives societies crazy. Look at radio and the rise of Nazism, with Hitler's voice blaring."

Aren't we in the midst of such a revolution at this moment?