000001 #human You start with a point attractor, like stillness in the case of a pendulum slowing down, or flowing basically straight to the sea in the case of a slow river. The next level of attractor is the circular, or limit-cycle attractor, as in the case of a pendulum's cycle between zero speed/max displacement (ends), and max speed/zero displacement (middle), or a bathtub-style vortex in the river when it's moving faster. Then you get torus-shaped attractors, such as vortices within vortices, as the river goes crashing on downstream. Then, you get (I'm not sure how the shape is described) vortices within vortices within vortices. But then--the attractor after that stage is called strange. And it's not just another zoom-level after the pattern thus far described. Somehow, the level of complexity becomes infinite, the shape of the strange attractor is fractal. How this happens, I do not understand.