Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick - That was one of the books i recently devoured. It is not a technical book, rather about the history of the science of choas - how mankind's unerstanding of the concept of chaos progressed over the years. A delightful read. Lots of interesting concepts.
I was of the view that chaos is random. But it seems, it is not. Lorentz, a meteorologist first postulated that non-periodicity could be deterministic. He also went on show that, chaos is not truly random, but it is actually bounded - he gave the world the Lorenz attractor. Of course, he did this with refrence to a meteorological problem. Also, it was he who coined the much abuesd phrase, butterfly effect - in scientific terms, sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Then the book talks about self similarity. An interesting observation was that an infinite length can bound a finite area. This concept is used to introduce fractal dimensions - fractional dimensions ( I did not understand much; so would not comment).
I one great quote that i found in the book was from a scientist who was displeased with people using the term 'non-linearity systems'. He said it was like saying Zoology is about 'non-elephant' animals - simply brilliant. All our years of education conditions us to think that the world is linear; when in fact, the world in completely non-linear.
Then there is a lot about turbulence - a vexing problem in Physics. There was a quote from Heisenberg ( The Uncertainty Principle guy ), on his death bed, saying he would ask God, "Why Realtivity and why Turbulence?" He goes on to say, "I really think He may have the answer to the first question."
There was a lot of stuff that went way over my head. But overall it was a good read.
I was of the view that chaos is random. But it seems, it is not. Lorentz, a meteorologist first postulated that non-periodicity could be deterministic. He also went on show that, chaos is not truly random, but it is actually bounded - he gave the world the Lorenz attractor. Of course, he did this with refrence to a meteorological problem. Also, it was he who coined the much abuesd phrase, butterfly effect - in scientific terms, sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Then the book talks about self similarity. An interesting observation was that an infinite length can bound a finite area. This concept is used to introduce fractal dimensions - fractional dimensions ( I did not understand much; so would not comment).
I one great quote that i found in the book was from a scientist who was displeased with people using the term 'non-linearity systems'. He said it was like saying Zoology is about 'non-elephant' animals - simply brilliant. All our years of education conditions us to think that the world is linear; when in fact, the world in completely non-linear.
Then there is a lot about turbulence - a vexing problem in Physics. There was a quote from Heisenberg ( The Uncertainty Principle guy ), on his death bed, saying he would ask God, "Why Realtivity and why Turbulence?" He goes on to say, "I really think He may have the answer to the first question."
There was a lot of stuff that went way over my head. But overall it was a good read.
No comments:
Post a Comment