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The blockbuster modern science classic that introduced the butterfly effect to the world—even more relevant two decades after it became an international sensation
For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. But even as relativity and quantum mechanics undermined that rigid certainty in the first half of the twentieth century, the scientific community clung to the idea that any system, no matter how complex, could be reduced to a simple pattern. In the 1960s, a small group of radical thinkers began to take that notion apart, placing new importance on the tiny experimental irregularities that scientists had long learned to ignore. Miniscule differences in data, they said, would eventually produce massive ones—and complex systems like the weather, economics, and human behavior suddenly became clearer and more beautiful than they had ever been before. In this seminal work of scientific writing, James Gleick lays out a cutting edge field of science with enough grace and precision that any reader will be able to grasp the science behind the beautiful complexity of the world around us.
| Prologue | 1 | |
| The Butterfly Effect | 9 | |
| Edward Lorenz and his toy weather | ||
| The computer misbehaves | ||
| Long-range forecasting is doomed | ||
| Order masquerading as randomness | ||
| A world of nonlinearity | ||
| "We completely missed the point" | ||
| Revolution | 33 | |
| A revolution in seeing | ||
| Pendulum clocks, space balls, and playground swings | ||
| The invention of the horseshoe | ||
| A mystery solved: Jupiter's Great Red Spot | ||
| Life's Ups and Downs | 57 | |
| Modeling wildlife populations | ||
| Nonlinear science, "the study of non-elephant animals" | ||
| Pitchfork bifurcations and a ride on the Spree | ||
| A movie of chaos and a messianic appeal | ||
| A Geometry of Nature | 81 | |
| A discovery about cotton prices | ||
| A refugee from Bourbaki | ||
| Transmission errors and jagged shores | ||
| New dimensions | ||
| The monsters of fractal geometry | ||
| Quakes in the schizosphere | ||
| From clouds to blood vessels | ||
| The trash cans of science | ||
| "To see the world in a grain of sand" | ||
| Strange Attractors | 119 | |
| A problem for God | ||
| Transitions in the laboratory | ||
| Rotating cylinders and a turning point | ||
| David Ruelle's idea for turbulence | ||
| Loops in phase space | ||
| Mille-feuilles and sausage | ||
| An astronomer's mapping | ||
| "Fireworks or galaxies" | ||
| Universality | 155 | |
| A new start at Los Alamos | ||
| The renormalization group | ||
| Decoding color | ||
| The rise of numerical experimentation | ||
| Mitchell Feigenbaum's break-through | ||
| A universal theory | ||
| The rejection letters | ||
| Meeting in Como | ||
| Clouds and paintings | ||
| The Experimenter | 189 | |
| Helium in a Small Box | ||
| "Insolid billowing of the solid" | ||
| Flow and form in nature | ||
| Albert Libchaber's delicate triumph | ||
| Experiment joins theory | ||
| From one dimension to many | ||
| Images of Chaos | 213 | |
| The complex plane | ||
| Surprise in Newton's method | ||
| The Mandelbrot set: sprouts and tendrils | ||
| Art and commerce meet science | ||
| Fractal basin boundaries | ||
| The chaos game | ||
| The Dynamical Systems Collective | 241 | |
| Santa Cruz and the sixties | ||
| The analog computer | ||
| Was this science? | ||
| "A long-range vision" | ||
| Measuring unpredictability | ||
| Information theory | ||
| From microscale to macroscale | ||
| The dripping faucet | ||
| Audiovisual aids | ||
| An era ends | ||
| Inner Rhythms | 273 | |
| A misunderstanding about models | ||
| The complex body | ||
| The dynamical heart | ||
| Resetting the biological clock | ||
| Fatal arrhythmia | ||
| Chick embryos and abnormal beats | ||
| Chaos as health | ||
| Chaos and Beyond | 301 | |
| New beliefs, new definitions | ||
| The Second Law, the snowflake puzzle, and loaded dice | ||
| Opportunity and necessity | ||
| Notes on Sources and Further Reading | 318 | |
| Acknowledgments | 341 | |
| Index | 343 |
Anonymous
Posted December 28, 2003
Unlike the reviewers above, I found the book to be a bit tough going at times. In addition, the focus on the personalities involved I found to be distracting. The math/science is good, the story somewhat less so.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 9, 2000
A very good history of fractal dynamics, its origins and applications for the layman from its origins in skewed data during meteorological printouts at MIT to modern day applications and how seemingly irrational phenomena can be explained..
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 13, 2001
The story of chaos is unwoven in this book in an interesting manner with few equations so the average reader can understand and comprehend the emergence of this science.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.TonyAY
Posted October 28, 2011
This book is typical of those authors that provide a lot of fact and detail, but do not tie anything together. Other than saying that I read a book about "Chaos theory", it was of little value or entertainment.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Chaos: Making a New Science is intrinsically a bunch of short essays based on the author's research into a number of Chaos experiments and the scientists performing them. One after another with nothing tying them into some sort of progression or main point. Still, many of the stories were very interesting and thought provoking. Some even included insightful tidbits about the inspirations or influences that guided the scientists. But overall it was a tedious read with no real conclusion other than this theory can mathematically describe many seemingly random events.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 12, 2013
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Posted April 18, 2010
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Posted January 25, 2010
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Posted November 18, 2008
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Posted November 29, 2011
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Posted February 11, 2013
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Posted October 14, 2011
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Posted July 23, 2009
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Posted March 29, 2011
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Overview
The blockbuster modern science classic that introduced the butterfly effect to the world—even more relevant two decades after it became an international sensation
For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. But even as relativity and quantum mechanics undermined that rigid certainty in the first half of the twentieth century, the scientific community clung to the idea that any system, no matter how complex, could be reduced to a ...