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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cosmos Book Leaves Mere Confusion, Not Chaos in its Wake,
By A Customer
This review is from: Chaos In The Cosmos (Hardcover)
As a caption to a photograph early in the book, Parker writes, "A field of stars. Some of them may be chaotic." To term an object "chaotic" is meaningless unless one specifies what behavior (its motion, its fluctuations in brightness) is displaying chaotic characteristics. This ambiguous and imprecise tone permeates the rest of the text, hindering a clear understanding of the sometimes counter-intuitive concepts of chaos._Chaos in the Cosmos_ aims to be a layperson's introduction to chaos, with applications to problems in planetary science, astrophysics and cosmology. Despite the careful attention Parker has paid to describing technical concepts in plain language, his explanations are not clearly constructed, and on several occasions include factual errors, contradictions and misunderstandings that lead me to guess he is not well-conversant on the subject himself. Anyone who has read the fine work of James Gleick in his book, _Chaos_, will be disappointed with _Chaos in the Cosmos_. Readers already familiar with the history of chaos science and its basic concepts may find useful the discussion of recent research, and the particular focus on astronomical applications (though this is brief and confined to the last half of the book). Those who are new to the study of chaos will glean some knowledge from reading the initial chapters, but I do not recommend it as an introduction to the discipline, since the inaccurate and inefficient explanations are misleading to the novice.
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Chaos In The Cosmos by Barry Parker (Hardcover - March 21, 1996)
Used & New from: $0.54
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