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Sync Paperback – April 14, 2004

by Steven Strogatz (Author)

4.6 582 ratings

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At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat, the sound of cycles in sync. Along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies congregate and flash in unison; the moon spins in perfect resonance with its orbit around the earth; our hearts depend on the synchronous firing of ten thousand pacemaker cells. While the forces that synchronize the flashing of fireflies may seem to have nothing to do with our heart cells, there is in fact a deep connection.

Synchrony is a science in its infancy, and Strogatz is a pioneer in this new frontier in which mathematicians and physicists attempt to pinpoint just how spontaneous order emerges from chaos. From underground caves in Texas where a French scientist spent six months alone tracking his sleep-wake cycle, to the home of a Dutch physicist who in 1665 discovered two of his pendulum clocks swinging in perfect time, this fascinating book spans disciplines, continents, and centuries. Engagingly written for readers of books such as Chaos and The Elegant Universe, Sync is a tour-de-force of nonfiction writing.

Print length

351 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 14, 2004
Grade level

8 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.88 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0786887214
ISBN-13

978-0786887217
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Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . If SYNC is, well, out of sync with global news, it's certainly in tune with the scientific world." -- Newsweek

"A vivid, first-hand account of what it is like to be at the beginning of a scientific revolution." -- Focus

"Compulsively readable." -- Science

"Describes dozens of sights and sounds that arise from collective, synchronized behavior . . . Delightful." -- Discover

"Every now and then you come across a science book that's just fun and amazing to read." -- Leader-Post [Regina]

"Offers a real sense of what it's like to be at the beginning of Something Big." -- New Scientist

"Strogatz . . . is a first-rate storyteller and an even better teacher . . . SYNC is a great read." -- Nature

"The most exciting new book of the spring . . . Masterful . . . A gem." -- Popular Science

About the Author

Steven Strogatz received his doctorate from Harvard University and served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT before becoming a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell Universitty in 1994. Widely recognized for his groundbreaking discoveries in chaos and complexity theory, he has received numerous awards throughout his career, including MIT's highest teaching prize and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the White House. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, Carol, and their two daughters, Leah and Joanna.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hyperion- Acquired Assets; Reprint edition (April 14, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 351 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0786887214
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0786887217
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 8 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.88 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #264,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Applied Physics
- #33 in System Theory
- #95 in Molecular Biology (Books)

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4.6 582 ratings

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Steven H. Strogatz

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STEVEN STROGATZ is the Winokur Distinguished Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Mathematics at Cornell University. A renowned teacher and one of the world’s most highly cited mathematicians, he has blogged about math for the New York Times and The New Yorker and has been a frequent guest on Radiolab and Science Friday. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

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KA

Must read

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2024

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UNIQUE INSIGHTS IN TO HOW SO MANY ASPECTS OF NATURE SHARE DEEPLY HIDEN ORDER. Would Strongly recommend this book to any one who likes to learn about nature

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Interesting Discussion of Synchronization in Our World

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2013

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In this book written by Steven Strogatz, professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, we learn, as the subtitle of the book states, "How order emerges from chaos in the universe, nature, and daily life." The book is divided into three main sections.

In the first section on "Living Sync", Strogatz discusses synchronization in living creatures: the synchronization of fireflies, and the work done on coupled oscillators which was an attempt to determine how the flies could sync their flashes. The discussion on how oscillators might work together continues with brain waves and the biological clock. I found the information about the research on how the biological clock works very interesting. It is fascinating how thousands of neurons in an area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei act as oscillators and how this "collective electrical rhythm of the pacemaker is conveyed [...] to the peripheral oscillators in the liver, kidney, and other organs throughout the body, disciplining them to run at the same period as the master clock." Thus, in nature, we see the mechanisms for sync.

In the second section we learn that "the capacity for sync does not depend on intelligence, or life, or natural selection." Strogatz notes instead that it springs from what he calls the deepest source of all, and that is the laws of mathematics and physics. These laws explain why the moon has what's called a 1:1 spin-orbit resonance (we always see the same side of the moon) and why there are these gaps in the asteroid belt called Kirkwood gaps. Shrinking things down to the quantum level, we are introduced to the weirdness of superconductivity and the Josephson junction with its rapidly oscillating supercurrent across an insulating junction - certainly strange stuff at this level.

In the 1960's and 1970s, we had the pioneers of sync, such as Wiener, Winfree, Kuramoto, Peskin, and Josephson; Strogatz expands on the work of all these individuals. He speaks of them as "blazing one path up the mountain, on the trail of spontaneous order in enormous systems of oscillators." Now we are introduced, in the next section, to something called synchronized chaos, and here we have an army of new individuals "clambering up a separate trail but headed for the same peak." We are taken into the strange world of this so-called chaos, which refers to a state that appears random but is set in motion by deterministic laws - predicable in the short run but unpredictable in the long run. Here we are in a world of space states, strange attractors, Lyapunov time, and nonlinearity, but as Strogatz notes "Chaos can sync." There is some exploration of sync in three dimensions before delving into the subject of complex networks. These are very important because "If the day should ever come that we understand how life emerges from a dance of lifeless chemicals, or how consciousness arises from billions of unconscious neurons, that understanding will surely rest on a deep theory of complex networks." Particular attention is paid to something called small-world networks. The question is whether or not oscillators connected in such a network can sync more easily that a traditional network. These networks are common in our world: the Internet backbone, the primate brain, metabolic reactions in a cell, even the structure of the English language.

Strogatz concludes indicating that sync has been an elementary part of nonlinear science, and offers insights into such diverse things as cardiac arrhythmias, superconductivity, sleep cycles, the power grid and more. Being grounded in rigorous mathematical ideas, it is important in a wide range of cooperative behavior in living and nonliving entities from the quantum to the cosmic. Where it all goes, only time will tell.

13 people found this helpful

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I am falling in love with my life

More difficult to read than I thought

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2015

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Imagine that you spend a vacation in Thailand and you see several thousands of fireflies along a river bank, where each of them flashes periodically. Before long, you will observe that they flash in union and periodically for a long time. It is known that when some proper conditions are satisfied, females who live together have a tendency to menstruate at the same time. If you hang two pendulums from hooks embedded in the same wooden beam and separate them not too long, then you will see that they move in sympathy: they swung precisely opposite to each other. When one sounded tick, the other would sound tock. We see here a spontaneous order.

"The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder (p1)". But as we have seen, "nature has somehow managed to assemble themselves (p1)".

In the above examples, the individuals oscillate in time. Two or more oscillators are said to be coupled if some physical or chemical process allows them to influence one another (p3). Using this language, we can say that the coupled oscillators synchronized themselves.

In this book, Steven Strogatz asks the following questions: How exactly do coupled oscillators synchronize themselves, and under what conditions? When is sync impossible and when is it inevitable? (p3)

1950s - Norbert Wiener was interested in the alpha rhythm of brain waves, 10 cycles a second. He argued that the frequency (10 cycles a second) comes from millions of brain cells of diverse frequency. The distribution of the diverse frequencies will be the bell shape that is highest at 10 (the normal distribution curve) if there is no coupling. But by some coupling, only the frequency 10 is distinguished. And he suggested a concrete frequency distribution (peak at 10) with the coupling.

Since there was no accurate equipment to prove his prediction, the confirmation had to be left to later researchers. And he guessed that such coupling would be quite universal. For example, he thought that synchronized croaking frogs and flashing fireflies are such phenomena.

1960s - Art Winfree considered groups of different kinds of things instead of identical things of different frequencies. If the population in the group is extremely diverse (inhomogeneous), then sync will not happen. If the populations are clones, then sync happens. They are obvious facts. We can expect that the amount of sync will increase as the homogeneity of the populations increases. What Winfree found was that there is a critical point such that the amount of sync never happens until the homogeneity of population increases to the point, and that the amount of sync surges abruptly after that point. It's like that at 0 degree, ice melt into water.

1970s - Winfree obtained his results by simulation. If mathematicians try to treat the above fundamental problems, they will think about some models that are abstraction of real things in nature. (For mathematicians, what else is possible?) Japanese physicist Yoshiki Kuramoto constructed a simpler, mathematical model, and he mathematically proved (but with some gaps) what Winfree did. Winfree and Kuramoto's works partially vindicated Wiener's claim in the sense that the sync happens under the condition that the oscillators are sufficiently homogeneous.

1980s - If we consider groups of different kinds of things instead of being interested in the same kind of individual things as Winfree did, then we can ask about the stability of the state of the groups. If the state of the groups is, say X, and if we perturb the groups a little bit, then would the state remain the same X? If so, the state is called stable, if not, called unstable.

Steven Strogatz solved a long standing problem about stability of sync at some point of homogeneity of populations near the critical point. His answer is that it is neutrally stable (jargon).

The book was more academic and difficult than I thought. I think that the book is difficult than Chaos by Gleick. For some chapters, if you are not familiar with the Gleick's book, you may have difficulty to read the chapters. And the language can be an obstacle to read. I am not a native English speaker and not so familiar with English other than my area. Retina, circadian, marvel, sympathy, speck, in union, etc, if you need to look up these words in a dictionary, then the book will be hard for you as it was to me.

The most appropriate readers for the books seem to be serious college students who study science and hope to be a researcher in this area, dynamical systems. If you are not so much eager to learn about dynamical systems, then the book can be boring because it deals with too many areas like biological clock (biology), superconductivity (physics), cryptography (information theory), BZ reaction (chemistry), etc even before the first two thirds of the book. I stopped reading from there. The author is known for a very skillful writer and I totally agree to that. But its coverage is too diverse.

The author majored in mathematics in college and studied biological mathematics in graduate school. One of the good points for me was that I realized that biological mathematics can be my interest (I am a pure mathematician who is interested in physics). When I read at an article that these days the famous geometer Mikhail Gromov studies biological mathematics, I wondered why he studies such things of different nature with geometry. Now I can understand.

The book quotes a phrase from the book 'The Geometry of Biological Time' by A. Winfree: "From cell division to heartbeat, clocklike rhythms pervade the activities of every living organism. The cycles of life are ultimately biochemical in mechanism but many of the principles that dominate their orchestration are essentially mathematical."

Strogatz says that "The players are different, but their abstract patterns of interaction are the same (p65).", or "The sympathy of clocks taught us that the capacity for sync does not depend on intelligence, or life, or natural selection. It springs from the deepest source of all: the laws of mathematics and physics (p108)."

Many physicists believe that there are mathematical principles that govern the universe. Similarly, I learned that there can be mathematical principles that govern the universe especially for the living beings.

There are many interesting scientific researches in the book. One of them is the experiments on the sleep cycle of human beings. It claims that there are forbidden zones in the sleep cycle such that at the period people can never sleep deeply. But I don't agree to the result. From my own experience, I know that I can sleep well at any time if I was awake more than 24 hours and I had peace in my mind then.

5 people found this helpful

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Francisco Inacio Bastos

livro claro e brilhante

Reviewed in Brazil on February 27, 2020

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Steven Strogatz é um dos maiores matemáticos aplicados do século XX, já na virada para o presente século. Sem se valer de uma única tecnicalidade, escreveu um livro em que destrincha diversos conceitos centrais da matemática aplicada, física, biologia contemporâneas. Não há outra forma de descrever o seu livro que não seja: brilhante!

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Gaurav Verma

Awesome and Engaging Read

Reviewed in India on March 18, 2021

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Awesome and engaging read....written with great flow....very clearly explained concepts...it made me interested to take up the subject...Non linear Dynamics...Steven Strogatz Rocks!!!!

2 people found this helpful

Joan Saldana

Bon estat del producte, ràpid i bon preu

Reviewed in Spain on September 22, 2019

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Llibre molt interessnt i que encara és d'actualitat. La mida de la lletra és massa petita per al meu gust.

Fabio C.

Bello ma non eccezionale

Reviewed in Italy on January 25, 2017

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Libro sicuramente interessante, ma non trovo Strogatz un divulgatore strepitoso.
Nella mia opinione lui ha avuto la fortuna di trovarsi al momento giusto e nel posto giusto(per gli articoli di fisica-matematica sul modelo di Kuramoto)... che poi sia la persona giusta... è da vedere.

Sicuramente è l'unica opzione non tecnica da leggere per chi si interessi a sincronizzazione.

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sonax_dragon

just fun and interesting to read

Reviewed in Germany on September 13, 2015

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Steven Strogatz just writes in a fun and interesting way and does not fail to inform at the same time. Very nice!

2 people found this helpful

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