Chaos: Making a New Science

Very dense but such a great read. Gleick's research and facility with technical concepts is impressive! Like The Information this book will likely add nuance to the way you view the world and give you deep knowledge about Chaos Theory that goes way beyond the Butterfly Effect. Chaos <> Randomness!

An intriguing look into some great facts, theories, though some are carried to absurd extremes. Once you read this book, you will look at many everyday things in nature in a completely new way. It's also a great way to initiate oneself to fractal phenominae.

This book is intended for those individuals that have a significant amount of scientific background, and that could relate to the fundamental theories deployed within it. The novice shouldn't even pick it up.

Very insightful. An account of the evolving thinking on Chaos theory. Interesting narrative, but not providing practical insight into complexity and its ramifications for leadership in daily or business life.

The product was in excellent condition and just as reported in description. Shipping was faster than I expected. This book was exactly what I expected. It gives a good summation of exactly what chaos theory is.

The product was in excellent condition and just as reported in description. Shipping was faster than I expected. This book was exactly what I expected. It gives a good summation of exactly what chaos theory is.

The book came quickly and in great condition. I have not yet finished the entire book, but the first 100-200 pages that I have read have been great. The book deals with several different aspects rather than only focusing on a single area of chaos theory. This is a great read for anyone interested in math.

This book is obviously written by a journalist for casual readers without any sort of scientific or mathematical education. I feel that it is likely to satisfy many of those readers. People who know even a little bit about chaos theory may glance at this book to see what sort of information is being so widely propagated to the less informed, and they will probably be less than enthusiastic.

I randomly picked this up at a bookstore several years ago and finally got around to reading it. It was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting some sort of scientific or philosophical argument and defense of the idea of "chaos" but (as others have noted here), that is not what this book is about. This is more of a history of ideas book, a book written by a journalist detailing the ideas historically, through the lens of many of the notable people who have helped contribute and wrestle with this idea of chaos.

It basically moves along historically, often detailing one person at a time, though at other times Gleick switches back and forth between people, as the story often requires. The book is attempted to be written at a lay level, though I'm not sure the average reader would pick up many of the things discussed (as I didn't, considering this was my first foray into the subject myself).

With that brief description said, I have to say that my review does consider the fact that it wasn't what I was personally expecting, and whether or not that's fair will just have to be up to whoever looks at my review. All I can do is be honest about why I'm rating it the way I did. The upshot of the book is that it's very interesting to read and Gleick is an excellent writer who has obviously done his research and poured a lot of time into the subject and into these academic personalities involved in this study. And if that sounds interesting to you I would recommend the book. I did go on to finish the whole thing, as I'm very stubborn and wanted to stick with my decision to purchase it and I wasn't overly disappointed once I understood what the book was about.

Those looking for something else should look elsewhere. The only really big "blunder" (so to speak) of the book is that it never really sets out to define in detail the notion of chaos from a scientific or philosophical perspective. I had read that critique from a one star reviewer a few weeks ago (can't remember which one) and someone had responded that Gleick had and cited the first 15 pages or so of the book. But, as I read these pages with this notion in mind I have to say I didn't find any robust definition of chaos, though I did find various descriptors. And, these are really different things at the end of the day. But, for the book's title, perhaps most readers won't find that a huge problem.

I originally came across the book Chaos by James Gleick as assigned reading from an on line course in behavioral biology taught by prof. Robert sapolsky from Stanford. More recently chaos theory was cited by Susan wise Bauer as the most important science theory of the late 20th century coming after the two great physics theories of the early twentieth century, relativity and quantum mechanics.
First off, chaos theory is a theory of applied math, not science or physics. Chaos is truly a different way of looking at the world. Everything depends on everything else and as they used to say in the 60s, everything is relevant. The popularized butterfly effect, the heart of chaos theory states that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can result in a storm across the globe. In the past, a scientist performed an experiment and tried to standardize conditions getting rid of all extraneous variables to try to achieve accurate results. In chaos it is not possible to do this. Chaos deals with complexity, whether it be the intricacy of fractal geometry or nonlinear fluid dynamics.
This book is difficult for those who are not mathematically inclined. I was surprised to see that so many customer reviewers thought the book was too easy and not enough math equations. A few like me thought the book was too hard. I guess if you are reading this book, you can handle its analytic nature. Professor sapolsky offers two great lectures on YouTube, one on chaos and a second on complexity and emergence which are an excellent introduction to this book. The book is important to read because chaos is how much of nature functions and not just the weather. Gleick describes well how the human body especially the circulatory and pulmonary systems are composed of fractal branching systems. I recommend this book as a good introduction to chaos theory and its founding scientists.

"Chaos: Making a New Science" tells us that there is some order, or regularity in complex, chaotic systems. In other words, things like turbulence, ecology, population changes, weather, and economies can be mapped and identified as following some expected path, although the path may diverge in different directions.

A frustration I had with this book is that by the end of it I couldn't figure out whether these complex systems were predictive or not. If the science is meant to be vague and not determinative of anything then that's fine but I think the author should have stated this clearly, rather than going around in circles.

The author's writing style is chaotic and hard to follow, jumping around from scientist to scientist and topic to topic, all in the same paragraph. The book reads like a very long NY Times article, rather than a developed and concise body of work. Others may disagree.

This book is the first of its kind, which introduces a new branch of science, the chaos or chaos theory from the historical point of view. This theory is widely applied in the transdisciplinary field of meteorology, mathematics, physics, population biology, cell biology, philosophy, astrophysics, information theory, economics, finance, robotics, and other diverse fields. The author has done a tremendous job of putting this book together with very little mathematics. I found this book highly engaging.

A brief summary of the book is as follows: Chaos physics along with classical and quantum physics are required to fully describe physical reality. Physical laws described by differential equations correspond to deterministic systems. In quantum physics, the Schrödinger equation which describes the continuous time evolution of a system's wave function is deterministic. However, the relationship between a system's wave function and the observable properties of the system is non-deterministic (quantum physical phenomenon). The systems studied in chaos theory are deterministic. In general for a deterministic system, if the initial state of a system were known exactly, then the future state of such a system could be predicted. However, there are many dynamical systems such as weather forecasting that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity referred to as the butterfly effect which suggests that small differences in initial conditions (for example, rounding errors caused by limiting the number of decimals in numerical computation), yield different results, rendering long-term prediction impossible, hence they are called chaotic systems. In short these systems are deterministic; their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. But that does not make it predictable, this behavior is known as deterministic chaos or chaos.

It is difficult to determine if a physical system is random or chaotic, because in practice no time series consists of pure 'signal.' There will always be some form of corrupting noise, even if it is present as round-off or truncation error. Thus any real time series, even if mostly deterministic, will contain some randomness. Methods that distinguishes deterministic and stochastic (a process having infinite progression with random variables) processes rely on the fact that a deterministic system always evolves in the same way from a given starting point. Thus, given a time series to test for determinism, one can: Pick a test state; search the time series for a similar or 'nearby' state; and compare their respective time evolutions. Define the error as the difference between the time evolution of the 'test' state and the time evolution of the nearby state. A deterministic system will have an error that either remains small (stable, regular solution) or increases exponentially with time (chaos). A stochastic system will have a randomly distributed error. Thus one can see that chaos is neither purely deterministic nor is it stochastic. Application of chaos into cosmology and quantum physical phenomenon illustrates that chaos theory is indeed an important feature of physical reality which requires further development of this field.

1. Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos
2. Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers

James Gleick (born 1954) is an American author, journalist and biographer who has written other books such as The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood,Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, etc.

He wrote in the Prologue to this 1987 book, "Where chaos begins, classical science stops... The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side---these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities. But in the 1970s a few scientists in the United States and Europe began to find a way through disorder. They were ... all seeking connections between different kinds of irregularity... The insights that emerged led directly to the natural world... A decade later, chaos has become a shorthand name for a fast-growing movement that is reshaping the fabric of the scientific establishment... The new science has spawned its own language, an elegant shop talk of fractals and bifurcations... To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being." (Pg. 3-5)

He quotes the work of biologist Robert May: "Chaos should be taught, he argued. It was time to recognize that the standard education of a scientist gave the wrong impression. No matter how elaborate linear mathematics could get... May argued that it inevitably misled scientists about their overwhelmingly nonlinear world... '...we would all be better off if more people realized that simple nonlinear systems do not necessarily possess simple dynamical properties.'" (Pg. 80)

He notes, "In the end, the word 'fractal' came to stand for a way of describing, calculating, and thinking about shapes that are irregular and fragmented, jagged and broken-up---shapes from the crystalline curves of snowflakes to the discontinuous dusts of galaxies. A fractal curve implies an organizing structure that lies hidden among the hideous complication of such shapes." (Pg. 113-114)

He discusses the "mathematical foundation for this powerful technique of reconstructing the phase space of an attractor from a stream of real data. As countless researchers soon discovered, the technique distinguishes between mere noise and chaos, in the new sense: orderly disorder created by simple processes. Truly random data remains spread out in an undefined mess. But chaos---deterministic and patterned---pulls the data into visible shapes. Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature favors just a few." (Pg. 266-267)

He quotes physicist Joseph Ford: "'God plays dice with the universe,' is Ford's answer to Einstein's famous question. 'But they're loaded dice. And the main objective of physics now is to find out by what rules they were loaded and how can we use them for our own ends.'" (Pg. 314)

For those wanting a “popular” level overview of Chaos theory, this non-technical book by a gifted and accomplished writer will be much welcomed.

James Gleick (born 1954) is an American author, journalist and biographer who has written other books such as The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood,Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, etc.

He wrote in the Prologue to this 1987 book, "Where chaos begins, classical science stops... The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side---these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities. But in the 1970s a few scientists in the United States and Europe began to find a way through disorder. They were ... all seeking connections between different kinds of irregularity... The insights that emerged led directly to the natural world... A decade later, chaos has become a shorthand name for a fast-growing movement that is reshaping the fabric of the scientific establishment... The new science has spawned its own language, an elegant shop talk of fractals and bifurcations... To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being." (Pg. 3-5)

He quotes the work of biologist Robert May: "Chaos should be taught, he argued. It was time to recognize that the standard education of a scientist gave the wrong impression. No matter how elaborate linear mathematics could get... May argued that it inevitably misled scientists about their overwhelmingly nonlinear world... '...we would all be better off if more people realized that simple nonlinear systems do not necessarily possess simple dynamical properties.'" (Pg. 80)

He notes, "In the end, the word 'fractal' came to stand for a way of describing, calculating, and thinking about shapes that are irregular and fragmented, jagged and broken-up---shapes from the crystalline curves of snowflakes to the discontinuous dusts of galaxies. A fractal curve implies an organizing structure that lies hidden among the hideous complication of such shapes." (Pg. 113-114)

He discusses the "mathematical foundation for this powerful technique of reconstructing the phase space of an attractor from a stream of real data. As countless researchers soon discovered, the technique distinguishes between mere noise and chaos, in the new sense: orderly disorder created by simple processes. Truly random data remains spread out in an undefined mess. But chaos---deterministic and patterned---pulls the data into visible shapes. Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature favors just a few." (Pg. 266-267)

He quotes physicist Joseph Ford: "'God plays dice with the universe,' is Ford's answer to Einstein's famous question. 'But they're loaded dice. And the main objective of physics now is to find out by what rules they were loaded and how can we use them for our own ends.'" (Pg. 314)

For those wanting a “popular” level overview of Chaos theory, this non-technical book by a gifted and accomplished writer will be much welcomed.

Okay, the background information is nice but, let's face it, it's the pictures that makes this book.

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I have re-read this work after many years.

I like it more than I did then and have added a star. The included pictures (and lots more) are now available on the internet. The background personages through which the emergence of Chaos as a science is told have, for the most part, now taken their place in history, somehow making it more interesting to me.

I find that the number of different characters is the main drawback. It's hard to keep each person in mind as to their personality, history, quirks, and contributions.

Chaos, the concept, is often explained in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, which sets off a long chain of consequences leading to rain falling in another part of the world. It's an overworn cliche by now, but one that still gets to the heart of a quality of nature that scientists and mathematicians prior to the 20th century didn't really grasp. It was hardly their fault. Living in the age of slide rules and tables (or before), they can't really be blamed for focusing on phenomena that were predictable, linear, and led to stable outcomes, and ignoring those that seemed too noisy, erratic, and error-prone to be represented with an equation.

Yet, as the age of computers dawned, it became clear that the "noise" in many natural systems wasn't error at all, but held its own elusive underlying order. The feedback loops in these systems would magnify initial discrepancies over time, but they would also perform a sort of self-correction, giving rise to repeated patterns and patterns-within-patterns -- similar, like the shape of clouds, but never exactly the same. It's now apparent that this complex dance between coherence and instability, between the macroscopic and the microscopic, drives many of nature's most interesting phenomena, from the branching of blood vessels into smaller ones, to how particles of smoke curl around each other, to the way a snowflake's shape reflects its journey through the atmosphere. Human consciousness itself seems to be an example of a chaotic, endlessly self-referential system.

Chaos, the book, though written in 1987, still does an excellent job of connecting the discoveries that opened the door to Chaos Theory. Gleick introduces us to figures like Edward Lorenz, whose work in weather prediction revealed that tiny differences in input in even simple mathematical models could lead to vast differences in output over time; Robert May, who discovered chaotic patterns in population dynamics; and Benoit Mandelbrot, now considered the father of fractals. Along the way, he touches on fundamental concepts like strange attractors, fractal dimension, bifurcation, complex boundaries, and the Mandlebrot set (whose astonishing visual representation you've seen if you've set foot in a poster shop in the last 25 years).

This is one of those books I'd recommend to people who already have some familiarity with the topic. While its purpose is introductory and there's little math, per se, I think the underlying profundities will be more obvious to readers who have taken a college-level math course or two or three. That disclaimer aside, I found Gleick's writing articulate, and seldom had much trouble visualizing what he was talking about, even listening to the audiobook. It's worth having the print edition on hand for the pictures and diagrams, but if you don't, the internet should suffice.

Despite being 25 years old, Chaos remains an invigorating read, offering a sense of discoveries and inventions yet to be made, and demonstrating that separate fields like physics, chemistry, biology, information theory, computing, cognitive science, climatology, and economics aren't as separate as we might think. As bonus, a 2000s-era afterward in the audiobook provides a brief update of progress in some areas since the book's original publication, and some thoughts on its cultural impact.

This book is a narrative about scientists in different fields realizing that the dynamical systems that model many important phenomena are chaotic. Chaotic dynamical systems appear in ecology, economics, fluid dynamics, medicine, meteorology and physics, even if they model phenomena which are not directly related. Chaos is part of the mathematical field of dynamical systems rather than a new science, but studying its manifestations in so many disciplines gives us more intuition than we would have if we only analyzed it abstractly. Aside from doing actual experiments, we can do experiments on computers to further develop our intuition and to suggest experiments to perform or conjectures to prove.

By looking at phase space we see how the state of a system changes in time, and an important idea in this book is that we want to also look at how phase space changes as we change some parameter. This is where period doublings and generally bifurcations enter the story. To analyze the trajectory of a system in phase space, we use the Poincaré map, which is introduced in the chapter on strange attractors and turbulence. Another important idea introduced in the book is scaling and similarity across scales.

The book is a model of a well written popular science book. Writing the book as a narrative of chaos being discovered, resisted and accepted makes the book more exciting to read than just description and exposition. My only complaint is that I would like the author to have said more about the mathematical field of dynamical systems, of which chaos is a subset; chaos can only arise when we're studying a system whose state changes in time, and this is precisely what the subject of dynamical systems studies. At the end of the book, Gleick give several definitions of chaos from different scientists. My favorite is Roderick V. Jensen's: "The irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems."

Gleick goes through the entire history of non-linear chaos theory. For new theorists, there are no mentors for this discipline. This reader's favorite: let's play a game of deterministic pinball! Write the program that will achieve perfect score. Uh, oh - one hitch, there are no save flippers at the bottom. The ball's path is determined by the force of the initial plunger action, then a 'few' variables begin creeping into the equation . . . Bottom line: life is continuously working to realize itself. Chaos is life's ultimate defense mechanism against the physical and spiritual universe.

We all know things that are not predictable. These can be everyday occurrences like the weather, or more specialised events (whether the stock market will go up or down). The unpredictable plays a large part in "normal life". Yet for some of these matters, there is a nagging feeling that if sufficient information were known, the unpredictable would indeed be able to be forecast with as much certainty as whether the sun will rise tomorrow. Thus James Gleick introduces the topic of `chaos' - there can be a "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". If we were to know the initial conditions in all their details, predictability would be brought within our grasp. Thus the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in China could result in rainfall in Indianapolis.

At times I was lost in the small detail, but the strength of this book is that it paints a big picture. The mathematics (and physics, and chemistry, and biology, and .....) is sometimes beyond me, but the overall story is that there is `chaos' all around. Some of the chaos is linked into classic Newtonian mechanics, but strangely enough, chaos almost has in itself an order and `predictability' about it.

The three of the most significant scientific theories of the 20th century are reckoned to be Einstein's General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and ...... Chaos Theory. Before opening this very historical account of the last mentioned, I knew nothing about the theory of chaos. Now I have an awareness of the subject, and how experimentation can play a part in mathematics. Experimentation and mathematics are not normally uttered in the same sentence.

Look for the big picture, and do not get lost in the people and places, which can be bewildering. If you read this book, please ensure that it has colour photographs within it - the pictures are both staggering, and help to bring home the message. Some areas of chaos have their roots in self similarity, and the pictures from Mendelbrot sets are both staggering and fascinating. Self similarity can be best summed up by the classic (and anonymous) ditty: "Big fleas have on their backs small fleas to bite them, small flees have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum"

Gleick is strong on the history and roots of chaos, and how the ideas were received when initially tabled. There was shock and disbelief that others from external communities could have something to say that would have relevance to (say) population growth models, from totally different scientific disciplines. There was also reluctance initially to publish some of the ground-braking ideas.

Chaos is about non-linear dynamics, fractals, fractal boundary basins and much more. As `chaos' as a concept (and almost as a discipline) spread, rather than bringing order when chaos had existed before (and this could be described as one of the main purposes of `science'), evidence of more chaos emerges.

From study, it could be that there is more evidence of chaos than we thought hitherto. There could be chaos in space, and the onset of cardiac arrhythmias (heart attacks) seems chaotic. Gleick speculates that `evolution' is chaos with feedback. He has made me more aware of randomness. Classic determinism generates randomness. Perhaps, just perhaps, chaos is a way to reconcile free will and determinism. All in all, unlike the pure scientists of old, I now find myself positively looking for chaos.

Perhaps that is a mark of a well presented book.

[...].

(This review is based on the iBook version of Chaos: The Enhanced Edition, which I am assuming is identical to the Kindle edition)

In 1987 I got my Bachelors of Science in physics, Prozac was launched in the US, and James Gleick published Chaos. I don't think the middle one has any bearing on the other two. But the first and last are tentatively linked because, despite being completely jazzed on physics, I didn't read it.

Being a young physicist with a new-found appreciation of the universe and just how complex it is, I quickly found there was nothing thing quite so irritating as a popular science book. Just imagine, after three years of sweat and tears you begin to get a feel for the basics of your chosen subject, when some smart alec arts student comes along authoritatively sprouting stuff that you think you should understand, but don't - and all because they've read the latest best seller in the science charts.

Humiliating? Not even close!

But time and maturity help to break down the fragile arrogance of youth, so when I was asked to review the just-released enhanced e-edition of James Gleick's best-seller Chaos, I willingly agreed. And I'm glad I did.

For those who were too young, too disinterested or, like me, too arrogant to read the book when it first appeared, this is the story of how a group of scientists and mathematicians from very different backgrounds found a new way to describe the world. Traditionally, scientists had tried to understand natural phenomenon and systems as stable or almost-stable systems. And it was assumed that complex systems needed even more complex models and webs of equations in order to fully appreciate them. Yet to traditional science, an understanding of even the simplest of natural systems - clouds, air movements, the patterns made by ink drops in water, remained elusive. Little by little though, researchers from different backgrounds began to realize that complexity could stem from very simple equations, that complex and apparently chaotic systems showed "regular" behavior, and that utterly different systems - noise on telephone wires, dripping taps, heartbeats and many, many others - demonstrated remarkable similarities. No longer did it seem necessary to develop ever-more complex science to understand complex natural systems.

This represented a profound change in understanding in the science community - and one that wasn't necessarily welcomed with open arms.

I can't say I was over the moon about reading Chaos as an ebook rather than a conventional book. But reading on the iPad was OK (the audiovisual elements aren't available on the Kindle). Reading non-fiction, the experience becomes less important than the assimilation of knowledge to me, so the iPad served its purpose. And I must admit, the iBook interface on the iPad is pretty slick.

Of course, the supposed beauty of ebooks - and this one in particular - is the stuff that you just cannot do with a conventional book.

Chaos: The Enhanced Edition includes seven embedded videos that illustrate different aspects of chaotoc systems. And they start with an interview with James Gleick. These are interesting. It's kind of cute to click on them and see the mathematics being visualized. And Gleick's introduction is worth watching. But to be honest, I found they really didn't add to my experience in reading the book. I didn't want to take a 1 - 2 minute break to watch an animation in the middle of reading I discovered. And compared to reading, the rate of information transfer from a video seems glacial!

For me, the videos were an unnecessary distraction. But of course, to others, they may not be - and to give them credit, they were short, unobtrusive, and well done.

Overall, the Chaos ebook is well worth reading. The enhancements I can take or leave - others may appreciate them though. But the text still has the power to make you think, and force you to see the world another way, whether it's observing clouds, listening to a tap drip, or idly watching the way the bubbles swirl in your just-poured glass of beer.

(Reproduced from the review: James Gleick's Chaos - the enhanced edition, on [...])

Shallow, opinionated and poorly researched book. It is as if the author used Wikipedia as his primary resource. Riddled with errors and omissions. For example the author states that biologists were so mathematically inept that it took a mathematician in the 1970's to apply the logistic growth equation to the question of population growth. The author fails to mention the work of Malthus (1698) and Leonardo of Pisa (1202). The mathematics of biology and ecology were extremely mature fields long before the1970's and certainly did not need to be rescued by an obscure mathematician in the 1970's. Given Glick's reputation, I was extremely disappointed by the shallow coverage of such a fascinating discipline.

In Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick tells us what chaos theory is, how it has been developing, and how it has spelled the end of the reductionist program in science. What is chaos theory? Some definitions near the end of the book include: "the complicated, aperiodic, attracting orbits of certain dynamical systems... A kind of order without periodicity... The irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems."

Scientists' previous beliefs concerning chaos have been proven obsolete: 1. Simple systems behave in simple ways. No! Simple systems give rise to complex behavior. 2. Complex behavior implies complex causes. No! Complex systems give rise to simple behavior. 3. Different systems behave differently. No! The laws of complexity hold universally, caring not at all for the dtails of a system's constituent atoms. Of course, there are many other definitions, but that is a start.

While parts of certain chapters dragged on way too much for me, the book as a whole is a good read using a story format. My next step is to finish two other books on chaos and complexity theory to be begin to get a more scientific feel.

This book is called 'Chaos : Making a new science' - so it should hardly
surprise anyone that it deals with the history of Chaos, bringing forth
the elementary concepts of the field along the way.
This book isn't, nor does it pretend to be, a textbook on chaos theory,
so one shouldn't expect too much maths or technical details. On the other
hand, a little maths is unavoidable for discussing even the most basic
notions of chaos theory, so the reader should be prepared for some
(not very demanding) maths.
The style adopted by Gleick is to interweave the personal lives of the
major players involved in the birth of chaos with a description the
concepts, thus giving the book a feel of an interesting story while
introducing a plethora of dazzling ideas at the same time.
The idea of self-similarity, of patterns composed of infinitely-repeating
tiny replicas of themselves, is astounding, to say the least. And to
learn that nature is full of such patterns is revealing indeed. The
implications to science and technology are far-reaching and often
surprising - researchers in Computer Networking have discovered that
network traffic in large networks such as the internet may actually be
following self-similar patterns !!
Personally, i found this to be a delightful read - Gleick's writing is
racy, the ideas involved are mind-bending, and the vivid imagery will
stay with you for a long,long time. I fell in love with fractals at
first sight and can gaze at a collection of beautiful fractals for hours.
In brief, this is a light, breezy account of the history of Chaos, with
a gentle introduction to the basic ideas of Chaos without much technical
details and only a minimum of maths.
One of the best 'Science for everyone' books i've ever read!

I found this book to be frustratingly surface-level, and written like a (very) drawn out pop-sci magazine article. Every chapter feels like a prologue that never ventures into the actual meat of chaos theory, and just dances around the topic.

I found Gleick's more recent book, The Information, to be a much more substantive exploration of that particular field (information theory) while not venturing too far into the weeds to lose a layman like myself.

This book is one of the earliest and best introductions to chaos theory available for the generalist. It is not so much a science text as it is a biography of the people who melded this amalgam of mathematics and science to produce an entirely new view of the world from a macro, rather than a micro viewpoint. Gleick's writing style is somewhat akin to a skilled mystery novelist, as he has a decided knack for revealing just the right tidbit at just the right time to optimally entertain and inform.

The scientific discussions in the book are relatively shallow, as is fitting for a general audience; after all the book was a national best seller and not only to be found in obscure corners of university bookstores. True academics and professionals within the field (or more accurately, fields) may find the book interesting, but more so from a historical standpoint rather than a rigorous scientific standpoint.

My assessment is that Gleick did the general reader a huge favor by producing this masterpiece, in that it serves as an excellent introduction to chaos theory that is accessible and comprehensible by intelligent people of varied backgrounds. In that sense he greatly surpassed his goal: this book is eminently readable and serves as a wonderful introduction to the science and personalities behind this new and wondrous theory.

This book ranks among my top 5 favorites. Not only is it well written and well researched, it cannot help but change the way you view the world...and in the process, change you! What Gleick has essentially done is tell the stories of prominent people who began to crack the world of chaos. And these stories read like novels that you can't put down! You'll puzzle with Benoit Mandelbrot as he asks, "What is the length of the coast of Britain?" and marvel later at the unimaginable complexity of his Mandelbrot set. You may also begin to wonder just how applicable the "idea" of fractals might be to our own lives and culture. You will sit with Lorentz as he watches his weather computer spit out diverging results from what he believed to be identical inputs, and realize right along with him the power of the butterfly effects. And the list goes on. Just as Galileo rocked the world with the notion that the earth is not at the center of the universe, and Newton reshaped all of physics with his "clockwork universe," and Einstein blew us away with relativity, and Bohr et al boggled our minds with Quantum mechanics, so too will Chaos re-shape the way you perceive the operations at work around you, and MAN, will it make you wonder! Perhaps things are not as simple as they seem.
If you are not a technically trained scientist, don't worry...neither is James Gleick. He's a writer who knows how to do his homework and tell a story, and anyone with a mind standing wide open will LOVE this book! But beware...you cannot predict how this will change your life...only that it will!

Few writers write clearly and concisely about science and Mathematics. James Gleick, a former science writer for the New York Times, writes about the first years of the study of chaos.

Focusing on scientists rather than science, Gleick explains the thought processes and investigative techniques researchers applied to chaos problems. Rather than attempt to explain Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with complicated equations, Chaos employs sketches, photographs, and descriptive prose.

There are not many writers who have the ability to write on two planes. One is understandable by the general public. The other is appreciated by experts who grasp the subject matter and appreciate the author's depth of understanding. I am not one of the latter. While reading the book, I found myself long for math that would connect the prose to the science.

Nevertheless, this book is a history of a new science. Limited as it is, it inspired me to further study. It is probably asking too much to expect more from a book about science's frontiers.

If you have ever looked at looming storm clouds, blossoming ferns, or raging rivers and wondered why they do what they do, this is the book for you. Drawing from decades of research, James Gleick writes a compelling historical narrative about the development of modern Chaos Theory; the guiding principle of which is that the world is an often unpredictable place filled with dynamic systems. As these systems interact in so many different ways, our attempts to predict the outcomes of even very simple things are often doomed to failure before we start due to this chaotic background noise of variables which we often do not account for. That is where Chaos Theory comes in, for, just as it affirms that there is chaos in the world, it also proclaims a certain order to which even chaos must kneel. Hidden patterns and rates of change which, given our investigations, seem to govern even chaotic systems. While they do not help us predict things accurately, they show trends and scaled graphs to which all systems eventually follow. In this way we can better understand the workings of the universe and so better respond to the world around us.

Topically, this book may be a weighty subject, but Gleick does well to stay in the realm of the common man when explaining things, often taking pages to explain the concepts behind each graph so that the reader does not get lost. He stays away from complex equations, and includes many diagrams and pictures to help the reader understand as the details the workings of nature.

Overall, I give this book 5 stars, and could not recommend it enough. It may be the most informative and perception altering book you will ever read.

This book literally changed my career. I was a young tenure track prof in earth sciences when I read this book in about 1991. As I was trying out some of the strange attractor effects on my stand-alone PC (using Lotus 1,2,3!), a colleague walked in and asked what I was doing. I told him about this utterly amazing book that I had read during my holiday and I showed him how I was trying to recreate some of the chaotic processes on my computer. This colleague was close to the end of his career. He looked over my shoulder for a while, then got up and said "you'll be doing something completely different within a year".
Within a year I had gotten tenure and resigned - I have never regretted my subsequent career, even though it was often difficult. Academia was too one-dimensional for me, I needed to find other paths. I know that 'Chaos' gave me the insight to accept that there was more than a linear career in a field that could easily be quite linear within a department that lacked enough creative minds.
My copy of 'Chaos' is a dog-eared paperback full of notes that I cherish. If you haven't read it, do - it will change your view of the world.

I normally read fantasy and science fiction. I ALMOST NEVER read non-fiction. When I read Jurassic Park I was intrigued by Ian Malcolm and his Chaos Theory. How he proved the scientists wrong. I guess I liked his smart-alec-ness. Anyway, I ended up reading Chaos and ended up loving it. I appreciate the fact the Mr. Gleick does not bog the reader down with equations and mathematical terms that only a chaotician or nuclear-physicist would understand. Just about every person can read this book. Whether you'll enjoy it or not is another story. I agree with some of the other reviews that he did concentrate mostly on the people, not what they did. But I haven't read any other books on this subject so I'm a poor judge as to whether Mr. Gleick was justified in doing that. This book definitely changed my life. I see the world differently. A cloud is not one big structure, but a structure made up of infinitely many smaller structures. By all means give this book a shot, it's well worth your time.

My interest in chaos started with a screen saver. The screen saver I downloaded is called juliasaver and basically calculates different fractal patterns in real time and displays them. I would sit and watch the everchanging patterns of colors on my computer screen in the dark for long periods of time (not hours, but long enough). They were complex and beautiful, I've even saved a few to use as backgrounds. I know very little about chaos, I knew that the chapter on chaos was towards the back of my calculus text book (a book I must admit, I hated opening). I also knew that it wasn't a simple concept but I was curious about how it worked. So I got this book. The book gives a good description of how the field got started and what the basics are. This isn't a textbook and it doesn't require a degree in math to read it. At times I had to stop and reread passages to understand what was going on, but given the complexity (no pun intended) of the subject, you'd almost have to. I liked the book a lot and it was a fast read given the subject matter. Gleick is an excellent writer, this isn't his best book (Faster is his best), but that is due to his choice of subject matter and not his writing. If you want a good review of chaos that doesn't require a math degree to understand, then this is the book for you.

In "On Linearity", Chapter XXXIII of "Science and Sanity", Alfred Korzybski wrote, "...when we combine elements, and the results have new [italics] characteristics absent in the original elements, the new problems are structurally no more of an additive [linear] character, and the synthesis must be different" (607). He also wrote, "Unfortunately, the study of non-linear problems is structurally very difficult and largely a problem of the future" (613). The future Korzybski wrote about is upon us. In the words of Yale physicist Roderick V. Jensen, 'chaos' theory involves the study of "...irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems" (Glieck 307). Such systems include smoke curling from a cigarette, water dripping from a faucet, the turbulent flow of heated fluids, branching patterns of a tree, stock market patterns, weather trends, etc. 'Chaos' theory has begun to provide a common language and mathematical tools for understanding phenomena in a broad swath of disciplines. Indeed 'chaos' does not seem a very good name since it implies a mess in what has been revealed as an area of complex order in apparently random processes. Glieck follows the story of some of the developers of this new field. He does a good job of giving a feel for his topic both in the text and the fascinating illustrations he has chosen. So-called 'chaos' studies seem quite in keeping with the broad Non-Aristotelian view of nature and science that Korzybski enunciated in his system known as General Semantics.

This is one good book - period.
I first read Faster by Gleick, since I heard a lot about Chaos, and had just finished arguing with my buddy as to why Future Shock by Toffler was a popular thriller, not a work of knowledge and art. Faster was good.... Chaos is brilliant.
In chaos, Gleick plays part narrator, part biographer, part mathematician, part histographer, part author, part philosopher... he transitions well between roles, and provides what is definitely the best introduction to Chaos theory that one can find. He explains the origins of the mathematics behind the Fractals, he contrasts personalities, he brings context and life to the characters in this drama and allows the reader to ponder gently over the philosophical implications. This is a book that makes you think a little bit more about how much we really know about life and the workings of the Universe
Read this book with care and an open mind - and welcome to the world of chaos!!!

Gleick has written a book about seeing order in disorder and simplicity in complexity. The book in a sense is a historical record of chaos from its beginnings through to the late 1980s. Chaos manifests itself in all areas of life from a dripping faucet to the beating of the heart to the spread of various epidemics. Gleick explores all different facets of chaos in a delightful manner. The main players take on a life of their own and the book is written in an interesting and captivating style.
Speaking from a layman's perspective, some of the content is difficult to grasp. At times I felt the material required technical knowledge which I simply did not possess. However, many of the concepts are wonderfully illustrated including a collection of colour photographs depicting various chaotic phenomena including the famous Mandelbrot set.
All in all a very interesting, educational read for anyone who enjoys science writing.

Mathmeticians, physicists, and others that unlike me did not find college level calculus challenging may be slightly disappointed with this book. There are no real equations for the Mandelbrot Set on the cover or any of the other areas of the discipline that are illustrated so well throughout the book. I have to say that the book was extremely interesting and difficult to put down. The visual presentation rather than equations seemed effective to me and Gleick is a very good science writer. There is possibly no other book that has stirred interest in this subject as well as this book for the layman in its 20 years. If you're not disappointed that you won't need a calculator to read this, I think you would appreciate the explanations for this new perspective on physics, meterology, biology, geology and math. I think of this book many times when I see alluvial flow patterns in the sand, the veination of leaves, mammotous clouds. It's an eye opener to part of the world that you may not perceive or begin to understand without reading this book.

Chaos is extremely difficult to understand. I imagine it is even more difficult to write about in an understandable way.

The thing that sets Gleick's book apart from others who write on this subject, is that he shows the history and development of chaos theory, and does so in an endlessly fascinating way. This book reads more like an historical novel than a book on science. I still didn't understand much about complexity and chaos after reading the book, but I really enjoyed reading it nonetheless.