Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness (Paperback)

~ (Author) "MAPS OF CHANGE Our journey through the mirror-worlds of order and chaos begins on the side of the mirror where we will view from various..." (more)
Key Phrases: turbulent science, autopoietic structures, phase space map, Yellow Emperor, University of California, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Unlike James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science ( LJ 8/87), which focused heavily on mathematics, Briggs and Peat look at how chaos theory--the idea that turbulent phenomena actually contain organizing patterns--has also influenced other scientific disciplines, offering a model, for example, for understanding the human brain and developing computer systems for artificial intelligence. The book's chapter heading quotations from Chinese Taoist texts and Alice in Wonderland are clues that readers are being led into abstruse territory. But encouraging readers to appreciate nuances of truth rather than to seek a reductionist version of truth may be what chaos theory--and this book--is all about. For comprehensive public and academic library collections.-- Laurie Tynan, Montgomery Cty.
Norristown P.L., Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Until recently, such phenomena as the volatility of weather systems, the fluctuation of the shock market, or the random firing of neurons in the brain were considered too "noisy" and complex to be probed by science. But now, with the aid of high-speed computers, scientists have been able to penetrate a reality that is changing the way we perceive the universe. Their findings -- the basis for chaos theory -- represent one of the most exciting scientific pursuits of our time.

No better introduction to this find could be found than John Briggs and F. David Peat's Turbulent Mirror. Together, they explore the many faces of chaos and reveal how its law direct most of the processes of everyday life and how it appears that everything in the universe is interconnected -- discovering an "emerging science of wholeness."

Turbulent Mirror introduces us to the scientists involved in study this endlessly strange field; to the theories that are turning our perception of the world on its head; and to the discoveries in mathematics, biology, and physics that are heralding a revolution more profound than the one responsible for producing the atomic bomb. With practical applications ranging from the control of traffic flow and the development of artifical intelligence to the treatment of heart attacks and schizophrenia, chaos promises to be an increasingly rewarding area of inquiry -- of interest to everyone.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 6, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060916966
• ISBN-13: 978-0060916961
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #184,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IGNORE CHAOS AT YOUR PERIL, June 4, 2000

By	Worldreels (MANKATO, MN) - See all my reviews

Very well thought out survey of chaos theory presents a metaphorical mirror as a means to magnify and project into view the hidden world of turbulence. The advent of the computer has brought chaos and fractals out of the closet. Here the authors teach the reader how to navigate in the turbulent world from the submicroscopic realms to the distant galaxies. The authors dish up a huge concept list: fractal dimensions, strange attractors, holograms, soliton bubbles, bifurcation, quantum phase locking, coevolution of species and the earth as Gaia -- all in an attempt to teach the reader the folly of allowing the part/whole dichotomy to rule your perception of the universe.

The book is a stark attack on those the authors term reductionists -- those who seek answers in breaking the whole into ever smaller parts. The authors' pet writers are David Bohm, Lynn Margulis, and Llya Prigogine but they toss in another hundred ideas for irregular stepping stones to get where they are going. Where is that? They composed an evangelical message -- that man now has the tools and knowledge to step through Alice's Looking Glass into an entirely new and mystical perception of the whole. They see chaos as a source of future evolution and life.

I give the authors a high mark for original thought. Although using a hundred other science writers to frame their ideas, they direct the reader to go beyond existing theories and strike a path for the center of the turbulent mirror. The diagrams and illustrations also were very helpful. They pictured the brain as a strange attractor, with thought arbitrating between the two realms of order and chaos. My favorite metaphor was the slime mold which, when food gets scarce, merges from being a collection of individual cells to a collective entity moving across the forest floor. This was to show an example of quantum phase locking which "could provide a bridge joining classical, nonlinear reality with linear, quantum reality" (P. 188). Great Two Thousand year Philosophy.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Book, June 23, 1999

By	"chulas_friend" (Portsmouth, NH United States) - See all my reviews

This book provides a great introduction to chaos theory and strikes a devastating blow to reductionism. Using a historical approach, the book walks the reader through the discoveries and mathematics that underlie fractals, chaos and complexity. It also provides a short, fascinating interview with Ilya Prigogine and a great layperson's introduction to his ideas. Turbulent Mirror makes the point that because of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" one can not really separate the whole from the parts - in essence there really are no "initial conditions." The only weakness of this book, IMHO, is the use of occasional Alice and Wonderland illustrations and a few too many quotes from eastern philosophy. These are not overpowering, however, so if you don't like them them can ignore them and enjoy the rest of the material which is truly great.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Ahead of its Time - still, February 27, 2005

By	Benjamin C. Ruth (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A wonderful synthesis of science at the edge. A grasp of how scientific methodology is changing to accommodate the revelations of chaos theory. The used edition I read was from 1990 and is prescient even now (alas). The informed and illuminating evidence that revolutionizes the current Neo-Darwinistic paradigm of molecular evolutionary theory towards the end of the book was particularly refreshing. John Briggs and F. Peat's thinking is so strikingly lucid, informed, and visionary that this book will fail to make almost any lecture list where it is most needed for years to come.