What is the main conflict in Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick?

Gleick begins by discussing the weather simulator created by Edward Lorenz. The weather changed slowly yet it never rained, seasons never changed, and nightfall never arrived. Instead, the weather was always a permanent, dry condition as if it was the middle of the day in some midseason. Lorenz had created a type of weather Camelot. The year was 1960. Lorenz, a research meteorologist, was a fixture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although his machine broke down about once a week, Lorenz managed to mesmerize his colleagues. Gleick explains Lorenz's processes and numerical methods and applications that would make him the weather god in his own artificial universe.