Chaos

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Gleick very effectively conveys the science, the excitement the early scientists working on it felt, and the challenges that faced them. I was never put off by the 'technical' words, thoroughly absorbed the diagrams and as for the coloured designs. From time to time, on rare occasions, I would form a binary event tree of life and would try to figure out the initial events that accumulated into current condition of life. Not to mention galaxy formation, fingerprints, shells, coastlines, or the thing that made the little dinos get the upper hand in those movies. I bought this book because I wanted to be a little bit like the fictional mathematician and chaos theorist Dr.

For new doctoral students, there were no mentors in chaos theory, no jobs, no journals devoted to chaos theory. Cutting across several scientific disciplines, James Gleick explores and elucidates the science of the unpredicatable with an immensely readable narrative style and flair . The kind of book that just blows your mind with how cool it all is, and why doesn't anyone teach science like THIS. It describes the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, and Lorenz attractors without using complicated mathematics. However there were many sections that bored me and aperiodic jumps in his focus that left me lost a bit.Chaos theory is a relatively new field in physics, and deals with simple and complex causes that react to one another. This book has been nominated for numerous book awards and widely acclaimed as one of the best books on chaos theory. Chaos: Making a New Science, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and was shortlisted for the Science Book Prize in 1989. Because of this, I found the book frustrating - both too complex to really grasp, and too superficial to really provide useful insight into the concept.

Gleick gives an unorganized overview some fun mathematical concepts like fractals, strange attractors, and chaos theory. Too heavy on human interest, too light on maths, and Gleick has read more Kuhn than is good for him. Three of these books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists, and they have been translated into more than twenty languages. Each stumbling step, each misguided attempt and every remonstration expected in such a new endeavor is traced out in loving detail and these scientists come alive as insecure dramers daring to step beyond the realms of the possible.At the same time, it was received with suspicion, after all it lacked a solid link with the natural world, and some thought of it as some kind of geometrical shapes obtained by someone playing with a computer. This book was into the most extraordinary mathematics ever, but the wonderful author writing so clearly and simply made it all utterly understandable.