Front cover image for Chaos : making a new science

Chaos : making a new science

The blockbuster modern science classic that introduced the butterfly effect to the world & mdash;even more relevant two decades after it became an international sensation 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 & mdash;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
eBook, English, 2011
Open Road Integrated Media, New York, N.Y., 2011
1 online resource (731 pages) : illustrations (some color)
9781453210475, 1453210474
712021584
Prologue
The Butterfly Effect
Revolution
Life's Ups and Downs
A Geometry of Nature
Strange Attractors
Universality
The Experimenter
Images of Chaos
The Dynamical Systems Collective
Inner Rhythms
Chaos and Beyond
Afterword
English