The alleged synthesis of nursing and public health has not produced the expected community-as-client emphasis. Public health is characterized as disease-focused, with masculine domination, using a causal model. The explanatory model of chaos challenges nurses to reexamine nursing's theoretical base by questioning assumptions associated with linear thinking. The selected chaotic concepts of a periodicity, attractors, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, phase space, and fractals are discussed here. Each concept's connection to physics and mathematics is cited and considerations for nursing science are outlined. Conclusions include redefining health, nursing, and community in chaotic terms and renaming nursing practice, which has this a periodic and holistic paradigm, as ecologic health nursing.
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