Chaos

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Gleick very effectively conveys the science, the excitement the early scientists working on it felt, and the challenges that faced them. Libchaber constructed a tiny box that held liquid helium between two metal plates, which he could heat separately. Robert Sapolsky said, "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. Shaw could adjust the variables of the equations by turning knobs on the computer, and it helped him visualize the sensitive dependence on the initial conditions Lorenz had discovered. But he decided to start in the middle of the simulation, typing in the numbers from the previous printout by hand.

I infer that the numerals which signal there is an endnote pert The amazing pictures and illustrations and the quotes accompanying each chapter all add to the feeling of reading an art text book rather than a science book.I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives. In science-speak, this is also known as “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” – and it became the cornerstone of the new field of chaos theory. But when the same thing happens beneath the wings of an airplane we’re traveling in, we’re more likely to panic. Gleick ends up noting that the demon could not operate, but then he keeps referring to it as if it really does operate, a (presumably) rhetorical move that is pointless and incoherent.

Of course, we're all, yeah, we use those equations all the time now and it's old hat, but not so long ago, they were totally in left field and none of the big boys wanted to play with them. One of the compelling features of the chaos story is that this scientific breakthrough wasn't a physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, or biology breakthrough; it was all of them.He Also Provides Portraits Of The Key Figures Contributing To The Inexorable Development Of Our Modern Understanding Of Information, Including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, And Claude Shannon.