These loops and spirals in 3-dimensional phase-space were infinitely deep, never quite joining, never intersecting. Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick l Summary & Study Guide. Born in New York City in 1954, James Gleick is one of the nation’s preeminent science writers. Welcome back. In an apparent coincidence, a small number of unrelated people became interested in studying aperiodic, non-linear problems arising in various fields of science all at roughly the same time. Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, as . Site Map. Chaos provides quite the adventure story as James Gleick tells the stories of the people who fought uphill battles to pioneer this new area of mathematics and scientific thought. Not so much a new science as an old obsession of a few mystics... :(, I finally read the book that ought to have been required reading for freshman physics majors for the past 20 years! Chaos, the concept, is often explained in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, which tips some indescribable balance, leading to rain falling in another part of the world. Living in the age of slide rules and tables (or before), they can't really be blamed for focusing. It was a blockbuster bestseller at the time, and it's still well worth reading, a fascinating, enjoyable introduction to one of the most important scientific developments of our time--the birth of chaos theory. The discovery of the new science, Chaos, brought on much skepticism from established scientists. Rössler's attractor; Hénon's attractor for globular star clusters (p. 148, 151). I did study a bit of Physics in a past life, but you don't need to have a background in science to get something out of this book. Having said that it is highly advised to google the terms described in the book, like 'fractal dimensi. By James Gleick. In the first chapter of Chaos, by James Gleick, the reader learns about Lorenz,a meteorologist who built a weather simulation program on his computer. I don't know what just happened but I KNOW it was good. We’d love your help. David Ruelle (1971) describes turbulent systems in phase space as varying about a "strange attractor", which attracts the orbit (only later does he learn about Lorenz' attractor). When this book came out in the late 80s, I remember eating in the college cafeteria while my physics teacher and fellow students chatted about this mysterious thing called "chaos theory." Acknowledgement: This work has been summarized using the 1987 For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune). Wow, this book was epic! This program mirrored real world weather trends, until one day Lorenz made a small rounding error while entering his data, and skewed all his results. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Chaos: The Tip of a Giant Iceberg Gleick only gives an introduction about the actual science and beauty of Chaos. Shortlisted Entries", "James Gleick's Chaos – the enhanced edition", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&t=48m25s, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chaos:_Making_a_New_Science&oldid=982237047, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 6 October 2020, at 23:02. 4 Stars for Chaos: Making A New Science (audiobook) by James Gleik read by Rob Shapiro. The book frequently returns to the information in Chapter 1, particularly the work of Edward Lorenz. Feel free to leave comments. He represented the systems with phase-space graphs. Home > Science and Math > James Gleick: Chaos. oKaY, wait this is confusing. By: James Gleick. He had studied transmission line noise and concluded noise was patterned like a Cantor set (p. 93), i.e., that on any scale the proportion of noise-containing periods to error-free periods was a constant. As much about the history of chaos theory and the scientists who pioneered it as the science itself. For example, the Koch curve ("snowflake", p. 99, 115) is infinitely long yet encloses a finite space with dimensions = 1.2618 (other examples include the Menger sponge; and the Sierpinski gasket). To see what your friends thought of this book, Not to the extent that you will miss the point. Their research had not advanced very far by the time this book was written in the mid-80s. His latest book, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood,was published in March 2011. [5], Robert Sapolsky said that, "Chaos is the first book since Baby Beluga where I've gotten to the last page and immediately started reading it over again from the front: I've found this to be the most influential book in my thinking about science since college. Biological systems such as the branching of the circulatory and bronchial systems proved to fit a fractal model. Everything you need to understand or teach Almost every paragraph contains a jolt. James Gleick (born August 1, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology. His books on fractals appeared 1975, 1977. Then, you may wind up contemplating how much of that migration was due to Jeff Goldblum's ham-fisted illustrations in "Jurassic Park". The kind of book that just blows your mind with how cool it all is, and why doesn't anyone teach science like THIS. Having said that it is highly advised to google the terms described in the book, like 'fractal dimensions' and 'strange attractor' to actually visualize the mind of the god !!! 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. I finally read the book that ought to have been required reading for freshman physics majors for the past 20 years! While the butterfly itself doesn’t case the tornado, the flapping of its wings is part of the initial condition of the system. 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. Gleick begins by discussing the weather simulator created by Edward Lorenz. My interest in chaos theory and butterfly effect has been purely philosophical. This is how popular science books should be. However there were many sections that bored me and aperiodic jumps in his focus that left me lost a bit. Read this book a long time ago. Chaos by James Gleick. The following entry presents an overview of Gleick's career through 1999. 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. James Yorke (1975) studied non-linear systems including the logistic growth equation x[next]=rx(1-x). Gosh, I was rather rude about this one, wasn't I? The punchline is that often what looks to be chaos to both the layperson and traditional science is … In the first chapter of Chaos, by James Gleick, the reader learns about Lorenz,a meteorologist who built a weather simulation program on his computer. Critical Review by Gale H. Carrithers Jr. important body of knowledge. 352 pp. chaos making a new science revised gleick james. The Poincaré section is a cross-section through an attractor diagram which allows display of structural details in 2-dimensions. "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick begins with the most basic knowledge of chaos as it is presented in weather. It sounds terribly difficult, but really it isn't. I guess the idea of alternate reality always intrigues me. Being the first popular book about chaos theory, it describes the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, and Lorenz attractors without using complicated mathematics. James Gleick: Chaos: Making A New Science Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 1988, 1998. From the flight patterns of flocks of birds, to heart arrhythmia, to stock market fluctuation to the coast of Alaska, the underlying patterns can be revealed in this wonderful branch of science. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published It portrays the efforts of dozens of scientists whose separate work contributed to the developing field. Real systems (e.g., the effects of measles inoculation on measles incidence) may show strange behavior when perturbed. Feigenbaum Bifurcation (fractal image created by MCM). He also found repetition which was never quite identical and studied non-linear systems that never attain a steady-state.