Customer Reviews

Introducing Chaos

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The main problem with the book is its emphasis on multiculterism, not to mention that the author simply does not know his stuff. We are told that Galileo ignored friction in order to get "neat results" and somehow caused Western science to only study linear systems. He seems to think that nonlinearity and chaos are the same thing. He tells us that nonlinear problems are not solvable. He actually suggests that we have only recently seen that the three-body problem is chaotic. (Instead Poincare proved the chaotic nature of the problem around 1890.) He seems to think that Asian philosophies actually capture the mathematical substance of chaos theory. I could go on. If you want to study chaos get the volume "Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science" by Peitgen, Jurgens, and Saupe.

Too much cute, too little substance. The author seems more interested in making jokes than presenting the topics of chaos and fractals.

I was also frustrated with the presentation in that the examples were frequently not related with the topic at hand.

Chaos of the bad kind

This was the book that got me hooked on the Introducing... series. I wanted to get a nice overview of Chaos Theory, and this book provided it.

I'm a fan of the Introducing series. I don't want to be too critical of this book, but I was a bit disappointed. I did learn a little more than I knew before I read it, but as many of the reviews say, the organization is a bit "chaotic" to the point where you feel you're never given a true overview of the subject. An introduction to any topic should at least try to leave you with some framework of organization for the topic as a whole.

You can probably learn as much about Chaos theory by reading the Wikipedia article. If I'm going to buy a book, I want something more. Perhaps a deeper exploration into one practical application of Chaos theory that shows it as a real science with a purpose. One is almost left with the impression that Chaos theory is more a post-modern criticism of western science rather than a true alternative explanation of phenomenon.

There were a few points made ... but nothing tied together .... almost a spewing of definitions like fractal, chaos, feedback, aperiodic behavior.... Not worth it.

I was looking for an easy-to-understand book on Chaos Theory for some non-English speakers (say, some Japanese students) to read, and I personally like "Introducing Fractal Geometry", so I got my hand on this book...

It was a mistake.

I would not say much about this. The author did introduce Chaos, not really Chaos theory, to the readers. He tried his best, I believe, to make things easy to understand by simplifying things... However, in doing so, he had just created Chaos.

Hence, this book is probably one of the best examples of "How Simplicity creates Complexity and Chaos"... a simple scheme found in Complex systems (like complex Cellular Automata which emerged from a simple set of rules).

One thing, while a lot of names (technical terms) were introduced, almost all of them are left unexplained. And I think only "introducing" is never enough. (Well, it was the name of the book afterall... this book wasn't named "Explaing Chaos" :)

There are other good books on Chaos for layperson. And, in fact, "Introducing Fractal Geometry" did a far better job than this one.

I've read a number of books on Chaos/Complexity, and found this one to be fine. I think my favorite was the one by Mitchell M. Waldrop "Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos."

At any rate, for the audience for which the book is intended, which is someone who wants an easy-to-read introduction on chaos, I think the book is perfectly adequate.

This is an excellent introduction to Chaos. It is aimed at the general non academic reader who may have heard about this buzzword called "Chaos" and wondered what's it all about. It is not for the academic, informed reader but a quick introduction for the intelligent layman or someone who last formally studied science many years ago. It draws heavily on James Gleick's book "Chaos" which was the first book to popularise the subject. If you are busy and want to know something about chaos to see if you then want to find out more, this book is perfect.

The authors somehow convince one that their understanding ofchaos theory is adequate without imparting that knowledge to thereader. I guess if you are already familiar with chaos theory, this book might be amusing, but for me the text was overloaded with jargon and the illustrations incomprehensible.

My personal exploration of the ideas of improvement and change have led along a path in which quantum physics, uncertainty, chaos and complexity have almost mysteriously become topics of growing relevance. It is fitting then that this book introduced me to one of the features of chaos, the strange attractor, a mechanism that draws a system's behaviour towards particular ways of operating.

Books in this series can be read in a day. They use a mix of text and cartoon style graphics to convey the key ingredients of a subject in a concise and straightforward way. The challenge of describing chaos theory is not a trivial one. Though it may require a couple of re-reads, the book does a pretty impressive job of introducing the key figures in the development of chaos theory, its key concepts and how chaos affects our lives.

I was intrigued for example to find Ray Bradbury Zen in the Art of Writingas the author of `A Sound of Thunder' a short story which predates the development of chaos theory.
At the heart of chaos is that complex systems, which meet a small number of criteria, will produce outcomes that are deterministic, but not predictable. This seems a paradox, and as Niels Bohr said
"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."

What is startling is that systems don't have to be very complex to be classed as complex, and the criteria, such as non-linear feedback can be found in most systems. The result is that chaos is all around us. What is intriguing is that science, and our desire to understand has led us to simplify our models of the world in such a way that we've created an alternate chaos free world. When we try to understand we trim off the twiddly bits and treat systems as linear. So for example our geometry is based on straight lines, yet in nature everything is raggedy edged. The fractal, is a way of seeing and appreciating the raggedness of the world and this is explored further in a related title in the series, Introducing Fractal Geometry.

This volume provides an easily accessible introduction to what is I believe an important element of any real understanding of effective change processes,

Perhaps further evidence of a `strange attractor' at work are the references in the final chapter to the inherent understanding of chaos within non-western cultures and belief systems such as Taoism, Buddhism Islam and Sufism. It even includes a picture of a symmetrical fractal decoration of the vestibule ceiling of the Chenar Bagh Madresseh School in Isfahan Iran. Isfahan being one of the places I visited when invited to speak recently in Iran.