Chaos: A New Science

Author: (USA) Gleick (Gleick/J.)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-11-01
Features: A butterfly in Beijing flaps its wings, causing a hurricane in the Caribbean? That's too exaggerated, is it a metaphor? After the emergence of chaos theory, you can no longer understand the world with traditional perspectives and simple cause-and-effect relationships. The so-called "chaos" refers to the phenomenon where seemingly deterministic systems exhibit unimaginably complex and diverse behaviors, and even slight variations in conditions can lead to astonishingly different outcomes. Chaos phenomena are everywhere in our lives! Rising cigarette smoke breaks into swirling eddies; flags flutter back and forth in the wind; the dripping water from a faucet transitions from a stable pattern to a random one. Chaos appears in the turbulence of the atmosphere and oceans, in the flight of airplanes, in traffic jams on highways, in the fluctuations of wildlife populations, in the vibrations of the heart and brain, and in the flow of oil in underground pipelines. Chaos theory is the third revolution in 20th-century physics since the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics, with its scope extending to almost every field of natural and social sciences. It has not only changed how astronomers view the solar system but also began to influence how entrepreneurs make insurance decisions, how politicians discuss how tensions lead to armed conflicts, and so on. Chaos theory is driving the entire modern knowledge system to become a new science. Chaos is the breakthrough work of James Gleick, one of America's greatest popular science best-selling authors. It has been nominated for the 1987 U.S. National Nonfiction Book Award and won the Best Nonfiction Bestseller in the UK, among other honors. To date, it has been translated into 19 foreign language editions and has become a global phenomenon. In this book, the author, with the professional expertise of a science journalist, records the research journey of chaos phenomena in an accessible and engaging manner, writing a richly illustrated reportage. The extraordinary sensitivity, perseverance, and creativity of scientists, as well as the frustrations and joys they experience in their pursuit of truth, are vividly presented through the author's lively writing.