Chaos

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However I'm very pleased that I obtained a copy and, having made my way through it, now feel that I may well end up reading it again at some point in the future. The content consists of a few badly written half-biographies, a few pretty pictures and vignettes of science, and no worthwhile mathematics whatsoever.

The science of Chaos cuts across traditional scientific disciplines, tying together unrelated kinds of wildness and irregularity, from the turbulence of weather to the complicated rhythms of the human heart, from the design of snowflakes to the whorls of windswept desert sands. This is one of the first books that was ever written on the chaos theory, and has also been nominated for various book prizes. From weather prediction to materials production to medicine, there's not a realm of technology that hasn't changed with our new understandings of the patterns that connect us all.

The most interesting chapters were the final two, about the possible application to physiology and then a summary of the concept.

I realised how much I was enjoying the book when I found myself twiddling my thumbs one lunch hour at work and decided to plot a simple bifurcation chart! However there were many sections that bored me and aperiodic jumps in his focus that left me lost a bit. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science.Chaos: Making a New Science is a debut non-fiction book by James Gleick that initially introduced the principles and early development of the chaos theory to the public. 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.