[xelxebar]

I picked up a copy of Chandrasekar's "Hydrodynamic and Magnetodynamic Stability" a while back and started working through it. The basics are relatively approachable, but dang the differential equations can get gnarly. It feels like a large portion of the art is in asking the right question that can aviod toppling into a mess of non-linearities.

Really good book, as far as I got through it. The beginning has a nice derivation of Navier-Stokes, which was mew to me.

[ncmncm]

The mess of non-linearities is where the action is, at least in nature. Designing systems to stay out of that mess is, as you say, art.