Customer Reviews

Chance and Chaos

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's nice to be hearing how a physicist places chaos theory in its place amongst possible explanations for natural phenomena. He doesn't oversell chaos, and doesn't undersell it. Not too big a tome -- a good read.

This is the best popular book on chaos, dynamic systems, and entropy that I have ever read, by one of the pioneers of this field. I have remarked in my reviews of Gribbin, Kaku, and others that Creative Geniuses in science (unlike Ingenious Followers who are so abundant) inspire others and themselves often by popularizing science in ordinary English. It is a good sign if they do this often, but sometimes they only do it seldom or never. Ruelle, as far as I know, only did it once, in this book, and the reader who loses the opportunity to obtain this book has lost a classic. Ruelle inspired me at an important place in my career (my fields are related to the probability-logic-entropy-physics interface). I am especially fond of recalling his description of how extremely new creations or inventions are typically received in science: journal reviewers will usually contradict each other in their haste to oust the newcomer. There are still journals which do not touch chaos, entropy, dynamic systems, fractals, not to mention my own field of logic-based probability.

Interesting book but it tries to cover too much material some of which cannot be adequately grasped without the maths (though some of the explanatory notes help). It also ends with some worn out admonitions about the future of humanity and such stuff which plagues science popularization books.

David Ruelle provides the reader of any level with an extremely readable overview of his pursuits of chaos theory. As a student of sociology, I found his study of physics captivating, especially with his connections between physical theory and sociology, economics, astrology, theology, and, well, sex. It's a quick and easy read, very understandable with little physics/math background. I recommend it to anyone who likes to think about new ways of viewing and understanding the world

This was an odd book from my perspective. It's a bit old now and after reflecting on the experience of reading it, I have figured out what it's purpose was. Books like this are basically what people who like to randomly browse Wikipedia read before there was Wikipedia. It wasn't really a serious treatment of "Chance" or "Chaos". There were quite a huge number of topics for such a small book. He covers game theory, turbulence, economics, history, genetics, quantum mechanics, Goedel's Theorem, entropy, algorithmic complexity, and on and on. Reminds me a bit of Asimov. How successful was he at actually delivering the right dose of this kind of collection of topics? Well, I frequently felt I was at the wrong level, either by knowing too much or too little. But regardless of what one gets from this, it's helpful to know that it is really a very diverse book and not tightly focused on "Chance and Chaos". That title more accurately describes the process the author used to select material to write about.

The book is deception by the author! He says he is letting you in on chaos, but doesn't. He tries but is not talking in the language that he actually thinks should be used to talk about these systems. He is only decieving himself and not the reader! I wish he had written this as if he were trying to explain it to his children and not as a way to make money. Your unique Associates ID is: thefractaltransl.

Via this book, David Ruelle provides an expertly-guided intellectual tour of a constellation of ideas including determinism, probability, chaos, turbulence, complexity, Godel's theorems, information, entropy, irreversibility, ergodicity, quantum mechanics, history, economics, game theory, genetics, and intelligence. He explains with elegant clarity and doesn't use much math, but his approach is fairly sophisticated, so some prior familiarity with these ideas would be helpful.

He doesn't neglect the basics, but his greatest value-added is in the way he interconnects these ideas. He also offers opinions and speculations which are worth pondering, even if you don't wind up agreeing with him. When you finish the book, you realize that it isn't framed around a central thesis and he doesn't offer simple conclusions, but that's to be expected with any skillful tour of a wondrously complex and mysterious place.

I very highly recommend this uniquely valuable book to anyone interested in this range of subject matter. Also, readers who like the books of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable) are likely to enjoy this book as well (and vice versa), on the basis of similarities in content and especially style.

This book is fundamentally about the limits of scientific knowledge and prediction. Using a historical retrospective of the discoveries of the laws of nature and the people who described them in combination with the consequences of the laws, Ruelle takes the reader through the concepts of deterministic chaos. The journey involves basic probability, quantum mechanics, the molecular theory of matter, the enormous number of potential states that the matter can have, statistical thermodynamics, Turing machines and the incompleteness theorems of Kurt Godel. Throughout this rather extensive journey through so much of modern scientific thought, Ruelle keeps it all at a level that the reader of the popular science literature can understand.
To his credit, Ruelle uses formulas, sometimes rather complex, when they are needed. It is a fundamental reality that some physical phenomena can only be succinctly described using a mathematical formula. If you have an interest in the role chaos has in the universe and in the current methods that the scientific community uses to describe it, you will find this book to be an excellent primer.

I used this audiotape as a supplement to a doctoral seminar in applied mathematics which I taught to business students. Most of them already had some background in Chaos and Complexity Theory and the level of the tape is really just a notch above the layman's understanding. However, it is very entertaining as well as informative for the more sophisticated audience. Basically we played a side of each of the two tapes in each class session. It was very much like having a Nobel Laureate as a guest lecturer (except that there is no Nobel in mathematics because Nobel's wife apparently had an affair with a mathematician!). Thoroughly enjoyable.

Who knows why Ruelle felt compelled to write this book? He makes a lot of sweeping statements about fields he doesn't have a mastery over. Only tangentially does he bring in chaos, and he doesn't bother staying on any point long enough to add any insight on any of the issues presented. It's such a weak book that it doesn't even have "brainstorming value" -- the collection of ideas is limited in breadth and depth. Perhaps in 1991 it was fashionable to come up with books like this; having read it in 1999, I found little of value.