Customer Reviews

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

+++++

This book, by astrophysicist John Gribbin, gives us insight into the concepts of "chaos" and "complexity." Chaos occurs when a small change in the starting conditions of a process produces a big change in the outcome of that process. A complex system is one that is chaotic, and in which the way the system develops feeds back on itself to change the way it is developing.

Is there an order or a simplicity that underlies chaos and complexity? According to Gribbin, there is. He states, "the great insight is that chaos and complexity follow simple laws-essentially the same simple laws discovered by Isaac Newton more than three hundred years ago." Gribbin goes on to make this startling statement:

"Chaos begets complexity, and complexity begets life."

So what is the theme of this book? Answer: "It is the simplicity that underpins complexity, and thereby makes life possible, that is the theme of this book."

The first three chapters tell us about Chaos. They are titled as follows:

(1) Order (or simplicity) out of chaos
(2) The return of chaos
(3) Chaos out of order

The next chapter introduces another important concept. It's titled:

(4) From chaos to complexity

The next two chapters introduce and discuss the most complex system of all. They're entitled:

(5) Earthquakes, (mass) extinctions, and emergence (of life)
(6) The facts of life

The final chapter looks into the biggest question facing science today: "Is there life beyond Earth, elsewhere in our Solar System, or out in the Universe at large?" The title of this chapter is:

(7) Life beyond

Throughout the book, Gribbin reveals how these revolutionary theories of chaos and complexity have been applied over the last two decades to explain all sorts of different, seemingly unrelated phenomena: from traffic jams and the stock market to weather patterns, the formation of galaxies, and the evolution of life. To make the book even more readable and interesting, all these ideas are put in their proper historical context.

There are over 35 illustrations (in the form of graphs, diagrams, etc.) that I found were helpful in visually describing key concepts.

There is also a short but invaluable glossary that I found to be very beneficial. In fact, it is from here that I obtained the above definitions of chaos and complexity.

Who is this book written for? I would say anybody interested in chaos and complexity. However, because Gribbin includes a wide range of scientific disciplines-from biology to physics and computing, meteorology to cosmology-I would recommend having a general scientific background. As well, knowledge of basic mathematics would help.

Finally, the only problem I had with this book is that each chapter is written as one, long narrative with no breaks. I feel that it would have been beneficial to have each chapter divided into subsections to ease reading.

In conclusion, this is a well-written book on what can be a difficult subject. If you want to learn the principles behind chaos and complexity, then this is the book to read!!

(first published 2004; acknowledgements; list of illustrations; introduction; 7 chapters; main narrative 250 pages; glossary; references; index)

+++++

This work takes giant steps with the history of science and cosmology. From the Big Bang to Life, from Copernicus to Lovelock, Professor Gribbin advances the theory of complex order from simple rules.

A reader familiar with complexity theory may feel they have heard all this before. Professor Gribbin however takes a very mathematical approach to the subject and delivers am interesting and readable account of his subject.

I recommend this work to serious lay readers (casual science readers may find the math daunting, although just appreciating the author's enthusiasm will be infectious) and to a general academic audience. The scope is vast but engagingly presented and readable.

Throughout the work Professor Gribbin goes on tangents and then announces that it is out of the scope of the present work. I challenge the good professor to write a new work on just those tangents. I for one will be happy to read it.

I have just finished reading Deep Simplicity and felt the urge to tell anyone who would listen how I felt about the book. Read the other reviewers to find out what the book is about.

There have been very few occasions and very few books that moved me in the way that Deep Simplicity did, for it is a work of art and without doubt a genuinely beautiful piece of literature. What's more, I feel that the beauty inherent in the book is self-similar on many scales, from the lucidly illustrative metaphors, to paragraphs that grab you as they weave delicately expounded threads together, to the overall structure and flow of the book itself. I felt privileged to have read the book.

After I finished I was left with a tremendous sense of appreciation for and recognition with our planet, its biosphere, life, and the Universe at large; even for my fellow man - although our depredations are made strikingly apparent. My final and lasting feeling is one of profound enlightenment; something felt when previously reading Gribbin, but not to this extent.

Thank You John Gribbin, for writing this book; $24.95 in one currency, priceless in another.

Dr. John Gribbin has written a number of books on physics, and his sixth book, "Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity", covers the basics of chaos theory. While I wouldn't call this book simple reading, he does make the subject very accessible for those willing to exercise their minds. Dr. Gribbin does a very good job of explaining the origins of Chaos Theory, and how it applies to natural law from weather to earthquakes to life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere in the Universe. He goes even further in looking at the behavior of man made phenomena such as traffic gridlock and the stock market

The content of this book gets five stars, but I do feel that it could have been organized more effectively. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning about chaos theory and how it relates to our place in the Universe.

It is a very informative, unique work by Gribbin about fascinating topics of physics, biology, life and Universe. What is more important it presents brand new experiments and many (maybe too many) mathematical models of network interconnections between simple parts and models of self-organized criticalities in the phase transition on the edge of chaos. This sounds like difficult text, and indeed, especially the third chapter (bifurcations and fractals) is not an easy read. Persistent and math inclined learner should try to grasp the sense of Power Law ("1/f noise"). Then after, satisfaction and pleasure of reading will grow, everything will become clear towards the end of the book. As a long time ago trained chemist, I was surprised discovering Lars Onsager's description of the FOURTH law of thermodynamics and that Alan Turing was not only an "iconic computer man" but worked on oscillating chemical reactions called "chemical clocks". These reactions (quote): "seemed to fly in the face of the second law of thermodynamics"! I was quite enlightened how phase transition can be explained as phenomena taking place on the edge of chaos. Last chapter is mostly devoted to James Lovelock and "Gaia Theory" presenting Earth as a self-organizing, entropy reducing system (check his last book "Revenge of Gaia"). Maverick physicist Lee Smolin has formulated the similar hypothesis about Milky Way. The field of chaos and complexity states that simple rules must underline many apparently noisy, complicated aspects of nature - and this is what John Gribbin writes about. Whether chaoplexologists will find any profound new scientific laws only time can tell. For now enjoy and reduce your entropy by absorbing information emanating from this book.

This book presents chaos and complexity theory deeply rooted in their mathematical/physical foundations, starting with Newton's laws. Although Mr. Gribbin presents some difficult concepts and formulas in the first part of the book, I would say that with a truly concentrated reading a layperson - like myself - can understand it; the rest of the book reads more smoothly. In this difficult part of the book, the author explains statistical physics and thermodynamics, including entropy and "the arrow of time" (very well explained) as well as fractals and the related maths. He explains that gravity is the essential prerequisite of life, without which there would be no way of temporarily breaking the second law of thermodynamics to reduce entropy. For the brief period of time that comprises the life of an organism, this law is broken; when the organism dies, its energy is released and an equilibrium state takes over. Without gravity, all energy would be dissipated and no life would be possible. In these chapters you can admire Mr. Gribbin's mastery of these concepts as well as his passion for the subject, since astrophysics is his true area of expertise. You can probably find the explanations of the rest of the book in other sources, but Mr. Gribbin's astrophysical background puts them in a different perspective.

Mr. Gribbins did me a great favor by explaining the true "Gaia" concept as well as the scientific work of Mr. Lovelock and his background both in chemistry and in the building of sensitive measuring equipments. I held the wrong and widespread idea that "Gaia" was a term used to define our planet as a truly living organism linked to some New Age philosophical ideas. Reading that it is a term to define a complex system in the thermodynamical sense and which comprises several smaller systems (ecosystems) that interact with Gaia and between themselves, is quite another story. The anecdote of Mr. Lovelock's proposed experiment to find life on Mars by analyzing the chemical composition of its atmosphere (whether its atmosphere is in equilibrium or not, whether the oxygen is bound to other elements, not allowing for chemical reactions and whether you can find compounds that are chemical signs of life - like CO2) was excellent. The NASA team did not follow Mr. Lovelock's recommendation to take samples of Mars' atmosphere, but used several equipments designed by him in the Mars Mission to look for life on the planet's surface. Today, scientists are using an adapted version of his proposal to look for life in distant planets without leaving the earth, using spectrography to obtain the chemical composition of their atmospheres. Inspired by what I read in this book about Gaia, I have now read Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution, whose authors are strong supporters of this theory. Excellent book on how microorganisms re-shaped our planet's chemical composition.

In this book you can read about chaotic systems like the weather in which a tiny variation in the initial conditions leads to a radically different outcome (butterfly effect), about systems in perfect equilibrium, as well as about self-sustained criticalities, which are systems at the edge of chaos, where life emerges. I would like to share the best and most simple explanation of entropy and thermodynamics, as well as of complex adaptive systems and self-sustained criticalities that I have read - intended for truly lay audiences, (read cero math or physics, but not lacking depth) Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. For an excellent explanation of statistical physics and power laws read Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another. In my opinion Chaos: Making a New Science is still the broadest and best explained book on the topic. Another fascinating take at it is Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, written by a mathematician who somehow managed to write an easy and accessible book without any maths (this book contains the best explanation of strange attractors that I have read).

Having only just read the book 6 years after publication, I don't typically write a review for a book that so many others have already provided excellent reviews. I make an exception if the author provides a stunningly good read as John Gribbin does in Deep Simplicity.

It's a quick and poignant subject survey. It is thoroughly applicable across scientific disciplines. It is by degrees overcome by events in specific areas of which the perpetual boogeyman of gravitational theory and the esoteric P versus NP problem of complexity have both evolved into a real world problems as revealed in collecting simple understandings of the expected LHC sensor outputs.

Gribbin provides a curious slant to order and chaos through an unfamiliar evolution and synergy among Newton's statics & dynamics through Maxwell's electromagnetics, Fourier's thermodynamics and the limits of mathematical philosophy in Poincare's `n-body' insolubility. I enjoyed the path that Gribbin's takes the reader to understand his argument. There are detours that the topically familiar reader will identify to depart, by degrees, Gribbin's conclusion. This in no way detracts from the Gribbin's effort, rather, Gribbin's argument is a springboard to further development. That there are newly emergent paths to consider after only 6 years of the book's publication speaks to the dynamic subject.

The physical sciences have evolved to require a `new' science for information extraction of the many constructs of physical, mathematical and logical operations to integrate in language that carries meaning. Gribbin's hits all around the requirement. Watching IBM's tour de force "Watson" demolish his human competition on Jeopardy through the application of knowledge algorithms is important in the premise Gribbin's initiates.


Read Deep Simplicity if for no other reason than gaining a better grasp of the mathematical power properties of complex systems and the significance and real world application of 1/f noise management.

I had just finished reading James Gleick's Chaos (yes, finally got around to it) and found it well written and deserving of the praise it has received. It is an in depth look at the modern founding of chaos theory and left me wondering about the quickly evolving advances in more recent times. Deep Simplicity was the right choice for me to extend that search. I enjoyed the longer look back at non-linear systems investigations where the mathematics was simply too tedious to carry out by hand. The many iterations necessary to see patterns in results was not practical until the advent of the computer, all 4k of Lorenz' processing power! Gribbon does a commendable of summarizing Gleick's work and moving on to the present. He also expands the effort into a cosmic overview at the end which illustrates nicely the interaction of life and the galactic processes that sustain it. Ultimately, then, if all the parts are necessary, isn't it in some larger sense all alive? Maybe necessary but not sufficient? Gribbon states that the boarder between living and nonliving systems becomes blurred as a result. Nice. My only reservation is that had I not read Chaos first, I think I'd have had less success with Deep Simplicity on its own. As for chaos theory, it is an exciting new descriptive tool, but I'm waiting to see concrete application. Gribbon is a good writer, and I'm looking forward to reading more work by him in the future.

I really enjoyed this approachable but thorough treatment of chaotic systems and biology. Gribbin cites many interesting studies, including one I loved--about the pigeon competition and the non-optimality of the competitive attractor. This book challenged some of my views, reinforced a lot, and generally led me pleasantly toward an understanding of life. The thermodynamics lessons were a boon, better than I've had it taught in school.

I agree with Mr. Kaufmann. Gribbin's writing is clear and conscise. A joy to read and full of useful models to apply in areas outside the field of science, such as economics and investing. I particularily like the Gribbin's treatment of historic figures in science, and his separation of political bias from the subject.

Read with Ice Age, Investing the Last Liberal Art (Hagerstrom), and suddenly stock market flucuations have a whole new meaning.