chemical systems that are otherwise stable become unsettled by diffusion under certain circumstances — in these “reaction-diffusion” systems, diffusion clashes with individual chemical reactions leading to the apparent paradox of the overall system getting more complicated over time. The same process that might lead to spots and patterns on animals also works on the molecular level, and some consider Turing’s work on reaction-diffusion systems to be one of the earliest forays into the field of chaos theory.
