Customer Reviews

Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on Scientific Revolutions of the 20th Century

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Just so you get an idea of Dr. Thuan's philosophical viewpoint, he is a neo-Platonist (in the sense that he believes in a self-existing reality where mathematics "resides") and he believes that the universe was designed. He also thinks that determinism is bad. If you agree with any or all of these perspectives, you probably won't find any new reasons to support your viewpoint. If you disagree, you will probably find little here to convince you otherwise. This is not a philosophically original work.

But Dr. Thuan does offer an engagingly written (if brief) account of much of the history of modern physics--big bang cosmology, electromagnetism, special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, strong and weak nuclear forces, particle physics--as well as some fun topics like black holes and wormholes, and he teases the reader with short accounts of potential research areas such as superstring theory and supersymmetry. His treatment is nice since we get not only the results of modern physics, but also some sense as to how we got them in the first place, which is often missing in works of popular science.

My only complaints (other than the possibly misleading title) are:
* I wish he would have been a little more careful to distinguish the behavior of chaotic systems from the operation of "chaos theory" in Chapter 3.
* In Chapter 6 I wish he would have given more rigorous reasons than his personal incredulity for doubting that natural selection can account for the diversity of life. At least he could have gotten a biologist's perspective--he quoted quite often from physicists and mathematicians, so presumably it wouldn't have been very hard to get a relevant comment from a biologist.
* I found his comments on the "evils" of determinism in Chapter 7 to be distracting and beside the point, but perhaps others will see merit in them.

Overall, it's a good read if you want to get a general sense of some of the more important advances in physics, but if it's philosophy you're looking for, you could do better elsewhere.

This book is a reflection of the scientific discoveries of the 20th century. Written in layman's terms, this book is fairly easy to read and understand. Not once did I come across a menacing differential equation or proof, so this book is truly for the non-scientific person with a desire to get familiar with at least the accomplishments of the field. I particularly liked the way the author tied everything together and showed how one discovery led to another. The author did this by starting with the premise of mankind's search for the "theory of everything," the holy grail of science. The only thing that I was disappointed with was his brevity on the subject of superstrings, considering their substantial potential. With that said, getting the average reader to the present in light of the past is accomplished well with this text.

A clear, eloquent, and graceful discussion of how recent scientifc discoveries impact our lives in more than just theoretical terms. Thuan begins with a wonderfully vivid, accessible overview of the latest theories about chaos, gravity, strange attractors, fractals, symmetry, superstrings, and the strangeness of atoms, and reveals how these discoveries have shaped our view of the universe. From the subatomic world to the vastness of quasars and galaxies, from the nature of mathematics to the fractal characteristics of the human circulatory system, Trinh Xuan Thuan takes us on a truly awe-inspiring tour of the universe as we know it today. With brilliant analogies that open up the strangest, often counterintuitive theories about all sorts of things most of us don't take the time to consider, what Thuan really shows readers in Chaos and Harmony is how science has actually restored mystery and amazement to the world around us.

I thoroughly enjoyed Xuan Thuan Trinh's approach to describing a modern view of the Universe. He ties many of the common themes underlying modern physics and science together. He also beautifully inter-weaves them together to give us all a better perspective on the advances that will come in the 21st century.

Without getting into specifics you read Chaos, Symetry and Harmony. A good description of all modern theories and how they tie to Chaos without concrete reasoning. Yes Stock Market behaves like Chaos so what do you do with that, i could not get the answer. I would call it more like a summary of modern physics