Chaos : Making a New Science by James Gleick (1988, Trade Paperback)

Description: CHAOS: Making A New Science by James Gleick (Paperback)(1987)Item is from my Private Collection. Book has a Plastic Protective covering over front cover, back cover and spine. Book is in Very Good Plus condition, Has a small bad spot near bottom of front cover (see last photo) & very slight wear on a couple corners. Interior Pages have no marks/no tears/no folds and are Excellent condition, Spine is intact - not broken and in Excellent condition. I tend to downgrade condition to be sure it meets standards, but items are generally better than my evaluation.6=============================================== CHAOS: Making A New Science by James Gleick (Paperback)(1987) 354 Pages The million-copy bestseller by National Book Award nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist James Gleick—the author of Time Travel: A History—that reveals the science behind chaos theoryA work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleick’s groundbreaking bestseller Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe. The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune).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—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. With more than a million copies sold, Chaos is “a groundbreaking book about what seems to be the future of physics” by a writer who has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the author of Time Travel: A History and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Publishers Weekly). Reviews:“Taut and exciting . . . a fascinating illustration of how the pattern of science changes.” —The New York Times Book Review“Beautifully lucid . . . Gleick has a novelist’s touch for describing his scientists and their settings, an eye for the apt analogy, and a sense of the dramatic and the poetic.”—San Francisco Chronicle Chaos-theory, touted as the third revolution in 20th-century science after relativity and quantum mechanics, uses traditional mathematics to understand complex natural systems with too many variables to study. Philosophically, it counters the Second Law of Thermodynamics by demonstrating the "spontaneous emergence of self-organization." In this new science apparent disorder is meaningful; the structure of chaos can be mapped by plotting graphically the calculations of nonlinear mathematics using "fractal" geometry, a brainchild of Benoit Mandelbrot in which symmetrical patterns repeat across different scales. With jocular descriptions of eccentric characters such as the "Dynamical Systems collective," (a.k.a. Chaos Cabal) of the University of CaliforniaSanta Cruz, Chaos offers an absorbing look at trailblazers on a new scientific frontier. - Library Journal“There is a teleological grandeur about this new math that gives the imagination wings.”—VogueGleick here adventurously attempts to describe the revolutionary science of "chaos," a challengingly abstract new look at nature in terms of nonlinear dynamics. "A ground-breaking book about what seems to be the future of physics," praised PW. - Publishers Weekly “Gleick’s Chaos is not only enthralling and precise, but full of beautifully strange and strangely beautiful ideas.”—Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach“Highly entertaining . . . a startling look at newly discovered universal laws.”—Chicago Tribune“An awe-inspiring book. Reading it gave me that sensation that someone had just found the light switch.” —Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the GalaxyFew writers distinguish themselves by their ability to write about complicated, even obscure topics clearly and engagingly. James Gleick, a former science writer for the New York Times, resides in this exclusive category. In Chaos, he takes on the job of depicting the first years of the study of chaos--the seemingly random patterns that characterize many natural phenomena.This is not a purely technical book. Instead, it focuses as much on the scientists studying chaos as on the chaos itself. In the pages of Gleick's book, the reader meets dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people. For instance, Mitchell Feigenbaum, who constructed and regulated his life by a 26-hour clock and watched his waking hours come in and out of phase with those of his coworkers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.As for chaos itself, Gleick does an outstanding job of explaining the thought processes and investigative techniques that researchers bring to bear on chaos problems. Rather than attempt to explain Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with gigantically complicated equations, Chaos relies on sketches, photographs, and Gleick's wonderful descriptive prose.- Amazon Review“Chaos is a feast.” —The Washington Post Book World“Fascinating . . . almost every paragraph contains a jolt.” —The New York Times About the authorJames Gleick was born in New York City in 1954. He worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for The New York Times, founded an early Internet portal, the Pipeline, and has written several books of popular science, including The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, which won the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and Time Travel: A History. He lives in Key West and New York. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ ~ I Am Always Open To Offers ~ (I try very hard to list my items honestly but sometimes I miss something. If for any reason you are unhappy with your item after you receive your item, please let me know. It is very important to me that you are satisfied with your purchase)

Price: 13.99 USD

Location: Dixon, Illinois

End Time: 2024-12-19T14:48:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: 3.89 USD