I want to experiment a bit with this book review and see how it goes so want to write the review of the book chapter wise and then a general description of the book. So here I go...
Chapter 1 - The Butterfly Effect
The butterfly effect name comes from to the map that depicts the infinite complexity, which doesn't run off the page and limits itself within certain boundaries.... the only specialty being that it never repeats itself. Roughly some what like a double spiral in 3D... this graph plot resembles a butterfly with two wings. The chapter begins with Edward Lorenz experimenting and trying to simulate the weather, and though serendipity realizing the non deterministic nature of a lot of phenomenon. Nicely written by the author... generated a lot of interest in me.
Chapter 2 - The revolution
James speaks about the change in perspective that too place - calling it a paradigm shift of paradigm shift. He gives an explanation for this shift using examples from pendulum, the big red eye in Jupiter, playground swings... and the kind. He introduces the great scientist Smale and his contribution to the field of Chaos...
Chapter 3 - Life's up and Down
This chapter shows how Chaos got to take a good place into the areas of science.. how scientist realized the inevitability of having and respecting the chaos in life sciences. The field of chaos begins to gain a stronger following and that is what is explained in this chapter.
Chapter 4 - A Geometry of Nature
This chapter is mostly regarding the development of subject of chaos. The contributions of Mandelbrot, are mainly highlighted in this chapter. This chapter shows the extent to which the fractals are prevalent in this worlds... the way the universe turns out to be nothing but a huge fractal... all fields.. Economics, biology all these stand a testimony to the great realization of fractals.
Chapter 5 - The strange Attractors
This chapter deals with the experiments that were conducted to improve understanding of a few concepts and how they finally landed up being more directive to the field of chaos. This chapter gives a sort of visual understanding of the activities described by chaos.
Chapter 6 - Universality
This chapter like others has a bit of repetition in it... the idea is repeated, I think to grant more emphasis on the fact the this is very prevalent... This chapter is a brief summary for me... about all the various observations that were made and the implications that could be derived from it.
Chapter 7 - The Experimenter
This chapter is a tribute to Albert Libchaber, who was very instrumental in taking the chaos theory closer to realization and aided better understanding of the theory. This chapter mainly concentrates on the fluid related representation of the chaos theory. The understanding about bifurcations improved by analyzing the spectrum the was sent out by this experiment.
Chapter 8 - Images of Chaos
This chapter gives a bit of introduction to chaos theory via mathematical terms... The representation of complex number for understanding and visualizing them as images, the Julian Set and much more is dealt with in this chapter.
Chapter 9 – The Dynamic System Collective
Deals with the way an organization was formed by self motivated and interested people to investigate in the domain of chaos… started off with very minimal support from any direction just for the interest of the subject, the contribution of this collective cannot be undermined. Very interesting as to how it developed.
Chapter 10 – Inner Rhythm
The human and biological field is investigated in the understanding of chaos through this chapter. The human heartbeat is looked into with much more detail, and interpreted for understanding using the chaos theory… the un-understood problems in biology seem to have some head way using Chaos… much more in this chapter…
Chapter 11 – Chaos and Beyond
This chapter is in itself a small summary of the whole book, giving us in brief all the major events and the personalities who contributed to this domain. This gives a brief insight as to how all these major icons went on with their contribution to the field of chaos…
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Now here is my take...
In totality, this is a nice book to read… we have got have the patience to read through the repletion of ideas – Gleick just wants to emphasize what he says. I am sure after reading this book a long with turning point we shall not look at nature in the same way… we begin to appreciate the way nature has organized itself….
Am sure will help change the perspective of a of people… an interesting read over all… just have to be a bit patient some times…
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
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