CHAOS : Making a New Science

Gleick, James

ISBN 10: 0140092501 / ISBN 13: 9780140092509

Published by Viking Press, New York, NY, 1987

About this Item

Text/BRAND NEW. Illustrated soft cover/NF, w/light wear. Fascinating moment in science history. The volume reviews a decade in which scientists shed restraints of classical science. Editor and reporter James Gleick of the New York Times, in lucid prose, recounts how physicists, biololgists, astronmers and economists --- using the concept of chaos --- create new ways of seeing order and pattern in areas where only the random, erratic and unpredictable were observable. Fine copy.

Seller Inventory # 008695

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CHAOS : Making a New Science
• Publisher: Viking Press, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140092501
• ISBN 13: 9780140092509
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition, 4th Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: None as Issued
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science, Technology

About this title

Synopsis

Explains the meaning and application of chaos--the study of patterns emerging from seemingly random phenomena--and introduces the scientists responsible for major discoveries in this field

Review

Few writers distinguish themselves by their ability to write about complicated, even obscure topics clearly and engagingly. In Chaos, James Gleick, a former science writer for the New York Times, shows that he resides in this exclusive category. Here he takes on the job of depicting the first years of the study of chaos--the seemingly random patterns that characterise many natural phenomena.

This is not a purely technical book. Instead, it focuses as much on the scientists studying chaos as on the chaos itself. In the pages of Gleick's book, the reader meets dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people. For instance, Mitchell Feigenbaum, who constructed and regulated his life by a 26-hour clock and watched his waking hours come in and out of phase with those of his coworkers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

As for chaos itself, Gleick does an outstanding job of explaining the thought processes and investigative techniques that researchers bring to bear on chaos problems. Rather than attempt to explain Julia sets, Lorenz attractors and the Mandelbrot Set with gigantically complicated equations, Chaos relies on sketches, photographs and Gleick's wonderful descriptive prose. --Christine Buttery