But usually this was at some level assumed to be associated with sensitive dependence on initial conditions and the chaos phenomenon—even though as we saw on page 1098 this alone does not even prevent there from being formulas.

Nesting does not appear to have been used in physical city plans (except to a small extent in Vauban star fortifications), though it is common in organizational structures.

Starting in the 1600s successes in physics and discoveries like the circulation of blood led to the idea that it should be possible to explain the operation of almost any natural system in essentially mechanical terms—leading for example René Descartes to claim in 1637 that we should one day be able to explain the operation of a tree just like we do a clock.

It has a somewhat longer period, but does not mix up nearby initial conditions as quickly as rule 30.