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Title details for Chaos by James Gleick - Available

Chaos

Making a New Science

by James Gleick
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune).
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. With more than a million copies sold, Chaos is “a groundbreaking book about what seems to be the future of physics” by a writer who has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the author of Time Travel: A History and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Publishers Weekly).

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 22, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781453210475

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781453210475
      • File size: 8135 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1160
    • Text Difficulty: 8-9

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 30, 1987
      Science readers who have gone through relativity theory, quantum physics, Heisenbergian uncertainty, black holes and the world of quarks and virtual particles only to be stunned by recent Grand Unified Theories (GUTS) will welcome New York Times science writer Gleick's adventurous attempt to describe the revolutionary science of chaos. "Chaos'' is what a handful of theorists steeped in math and computer know-how are calling their challengingly abstract new look at nature in terms of nonlinear dynamics. Gleick traces the ideas of these little-known pioneersincluding Mitchell Feigenbaum and his Butterfly Effect; Benoit Mandelbrot, whose ``fractal'' concept led to a new geometry of nature; and Joseph Ford who countered Einstein with ``God plays dice with the universe. But they're loaded dice.'' Chaos is deep, even frightening in its holistic embrace of nature as paradoxically complex, wildly disorderly, random and yet stable in its infinite stream of ``self-similarities.'' A ground-breaking book about what seems to be the future of physics. Illustrations. QPBC alternate.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 1, 1988
      Gleick here adventurously attempts to describe the revolutionary science of ``chaos,'' a challengingly abstract new look at nature in terms of nonlinear dynamics. ``A ground-breaking book about what seems to be the future of physics,'' praised PW. Illustrated. 100,000 first printing; author tour.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1160
  • Text Difficulty:8-9

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