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More and more, colleges are introducing formal courses on nonlinear science and chaos. Many students enter such courses already excited about chaos from reading popular accounts, seeing spectacular fractal images, or perhaps even generating strange attractors on their own computers. Raw enthusiasm is one thing, but deciding which aspects of nonlinear dynamics to include in a textbook is another. Enthusiasm has its drawbacks. In his television series" America", Alistair Cooke recalled a 1930s story of an American student from the prairie who, newly arrived in England, watches the passing scenery from his railroad compartment. He sits opposite a parson absorbed in his newspaper. Amazed at the small scale landscape, the student blurts out," You know, sir, the whole of England could be fitted into one corner of Nebraska!" The parson crisply replies," Yes, but to what end, young man?" One is often tempted …