The Essence of Chaos (The Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series)
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ISBN13: 9780295975146Condition: NEWNotes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The study of chaotic systems has become a major scientific pursuit in recent years, shedding light on the apparently random behaviour observed in fields as diverse as climatology and mechanics. InThe Essence of Chaos Edward Lorenz, one of the founding fathers of Chaos and the originator of its seminal concept of the Butterfly Effect, presents his own landscape of our current understanding of the field.
Lorenz presents everyday examples of chaotic behaviour, such as the toss of a coin, the pinball's path, the fall of a leaf, and explains in elementary mathematical strms how their essentially chaotic nature can be understood. His principal example involved the construction of a model of a board sliding down a ski slope. Through this model Lorenz illustrates chaotic phenomena and the related concepts of bifurcation and strange attractors. He also provides the context in which chaos can be related to the similarly emergent fields of nonlinearity, complexity and fractals.
As an early pioneer of chaos, Lorenz also provides his own story of the human endeavour in developing this new field. He describes his initial encounters with chaos through his study of climate and introduces many of the personalities who contributed early breakthroughs. His seminal paper, "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" is published for the first time.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Introductory examples of chaos
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Comment:
Chaos is not randomness and randomness is not chaos. Ed Lorenz, one of the founding fathers of chaos theory, has produced a book aimed at explaining chaos theory to the public, starting and ending on the same point- common usage has incorrectly rendered "chaotic" and "random" to be synonyms. Randomness implies that there are no equations to govern the evolution of a system, while chaos implies that the system is incredibly sensitive to its initial conditions, but there are equations behind the curtain. A pinball machine, flipping coins, tossing dice, and the global weather are all examples of chaotic systems, despite what your math teachers might have told you. Along the way you get a small dose of the history of the field and the relevant higher-level mathematics.
Lorenz does, I think, a pretty good job of explaining the subject. The more mathematically inclined reader will find all the details and differential equations in the appendix of the book, but for the most part you do not need to have that much of a mathematical background to understand the main points of the book. Sometimes the explanations do get a little hairy, and might require a second read. Lorenz makes analogies with simple systems and everyday occurrences (such as a pinball machine and skiing down moguls) in engaging language mostly free of jargon. I would recommend this book if you are interesting in learning about the basics of chaos theory. I haven't yet read Gleick's famous Chaos: Making a New Science, but this seems like an excellent place to start.
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Summary:
Great review of chaos by one of the founding fathers
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Comment:
Edward Lorenz is credited with "discovering" chaos theory based on his meteorological work. In The Essence of Chaos, Lorenz does a great job describing the historical background of chaos theory and its implications for the natural world. Well-written with some interesting graphics.
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Summary:
Very Good Introduction
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Comment:
I read this book when it was snowing outside in the Sierras. I was immediately able to correlate this book with the chaotic snow fall.
Extremely good read.
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Summary:
This is the book if you're looking for a chaos primer
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Comment:
If your interest in Chaos was piqued by Gleick's book on the subject, you may have found it unsatisfying. While it conveyed a enthusiasm for chaos, it only superficially answered questions about what characterizes a chaotic system. "The Essence of Chaos" is a much better book for gaining an understanding of chaos, mainly because it includes a discussion of the mathematics. Both authors strive to avoid mathematics as much as possible, but in the end, I believe Lorenz achieves a better balance. He only touches lightly on the math, but without that, it's impossible to understand what makes a system chaotic. He doesn't quite go so far as to show a practical application of chaos theory, but a clear and concise example of that probably doesn't exist yet. But, he does achieve the goal of demonstrating and examining the fascinating characteristics of a chaotic system.
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Summary:
Not for the Lay Person
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Comment:
Having read several books about Chaos Theory, and having been promised a user-friendly and yet academic book on the subject, this book fell a little short. Certainly academic, not so easy for someone who does not have a solid background in the sciences and mathematics fields. The various sections cover much of the recent research, and if you can get past the equations, you get a more complete sense of the progression in the subject.
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