[Omphalos]

Chapter titles, IMHO, are useless save for one situation, and that is where the author makes some pretty big change from one chapter to another. Lots of authors do not do this. Kevin J. Anderson for example. He uses chapters to differentiate different characters point of view at different times, but since he never really changes themes or plot at all within the story, numbers will do just fine. But other authors kind of jump around from idea to idea, and within a piece of prose where that happens, I think chapter titles are great ideas, mainly because they can give a good capsule/lozenge of what is to come. Even where cryptic, I like having them then also because it gives you somehting to reference when discussign the book later.