Simplicity: The Latent Order of Complexity - Softcover

Joseph P. Zbilut ; Alessandro Giuliani

9781600219634: Simplicity: The Latent Order of Complexity

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1600219632 ISBN 13: 9781600219634

Publisher: Nova Science Publishers Inc, 2008

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The scope of public ignorance concerning how things work inevitably grows explosively. It is unreasonable to expect widespread or detailed understanding even of the many major support systems that make urban life possible (clean water, electrical supply, groceries in markets at all seasons, trash and sewage disposal). What we don't understand seems 'complex' to us, at least until, with study or practice, we may achieve an occasional "Ah -- Ha!" moment when complexity suddenly reduces to simplicity, and part of our world view changes forever. In this welcome and appealing book the authors, who have achieved stature in both experimental and theoretical sciences, address the grandest "how things work" issue of them all, viz., the methods and limitations of science itself. They do so in a conversational style accessible to any interested reader. Queries about how science works have provoked controversies from the beginning, still continuing, but even more animated are debates about the limitations of science and its methods. Responsible and informed people are even writing books and articles with the theme: "The End of Science!" In that setting, Zbilut and Giuliani unflinchingly guide the reader through brambles and thickets, emerging unscratched -- an admirable accomplishment.

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From the Author

When Joe and me decided to write into a book the ideas, topics and comments we developed in more than 15 years of collaboration we were deeply impressed by the fact science work was incredibly similar to the artisan work.
The more and more we wrote the more and more we came back to the same basic ideas of 'perspective', 'points of view', 'elegance' that inform the work of painters and architects while other concepts like 'abstraction', 'rigor', 'logical depth' that appear more usual for scientific methodology seemed to us out of scope and a little bit ridiculuous.
We were so puzzled and amused by that we probably filled the book with a lot of redundancies and repetitions..nevertheless we hope to have conveyed to the reader the sense of science as a portion of arts and crafts professions and to help to save it from the massification peril.

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