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Chaos: The Making of a New Science

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 10,735 ratings · 338 reviews

Chaos records the birth of a new science. This new science offers a way of seeing order and pattern where formerly only the random, the erratic, the unpredictable -in short, the chaotic- had been observed. In the words of Douglas Hofstadter, "It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order -and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier...more

Paperback, 368 pages

Published December 1st 1988 by Penguin Books (first published 1987)

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Dec 25, 2012 Riku Sayuj rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, favorites

Chaos: The Tip of a Giant Iceberg

Gleick only gives an introduction about the actual science and beauty of Chaos. Instead he focusses on giving a poetic account of the scientists who first stumbled on it and their great surprise and the struggles form the narrative crux of the book.

While some may say this makes it a less informative book, for me this made it one of the most intriguing non-fiction books I have read. Gleick's way of telling the stories makes the reader share in the wonder and incre...more Chaos: The Tip of a Giant Iceberg

Gleick only gives an introduction about the actual science and beauty of Chaos. Instead he focusses on giving a poetic account of the scientists who first stumbled on it and their great surprise and the struggles form the narrative crux of the book.

While some may say this makes it a less informative book, for me this made it one of the most intriguing non-fiction books I have read. Gleick's way of telling the stories makes the reader share in the wonder and incredulity of each pioneer as he stumbled upon this hitherto unguessed truth of nature. Each stumbling step, each misguided attempt and every remonstration expected in such a new endeavor is traced out in loving detail and these scientists come alive as insecure dramers daring to step beyond the realms of the possible. Gleick makes heroes out of Mandelbrot Benoît and the others and weaves an otherworldly charm around their ideas. This made the book pure poetry for me.

The amazing pictures and illustrations and the quotes accompanying each chapter all add to the feeling of reading an art text book rather than a science book. And this ultimately was the real achievement of Gleick in writing Chaos - He manages to convey to us that this is the first foray of science into the realm of art - not just of explaining art but of being art.

But ultimately none of this is going to be the lasting impact of this book. The reading pleasure and the hero worship of these daredevils is transient after all. For me, the real impact is that it has changed the way I look at the ordinary everyday world - the leaves, the trees, the pebbles, the pattern on the peels of an orange - everything is strangely magnified and beautiful now. I see the poetry of constant motion and evolution everywhere and I can feel the science of Chaos intuitively as I take my long walks. I can see Strange Attractors and Fractals and unstable equilibriums in the most mundane places. And this is the greatest gift of the book.

PS. Don't miss out on the exhaustive endnotes. They are indispensable.(less)

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Sep 24, 2008 Jeff HansPetersen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I finally read the book that ought to have been required reading for freshman physics majors for the past 20 years! The other day when the radio announcer reported the length of the Florida coastline, I found myself wondering what length measuring stick was used. It is interesting to contemplate how much of the themes of this book have migrated into the modern cultural consciousness. Then, you may wind up contemplating how much of that migration was due to Jeff Goldblum's ham-fisted illustration...more

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Feb 21, 2012 Victoire rated it 5 of 5 stars

Awesome predictability of unpredictability, namely sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Wonderful bifurcations and pretty things abound... it'll make you realise why we'll never understand everything.

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Feb 08, 2009 Chris Cook added it

There is not much one can say about this book that is not on the cover. I am just one more person praising its contents. The notion that the paradigm of science could turn its self over is astounding. In out lifetime it went from the study of all things orderly to included all things disorderly. I was heavily into science as a child and majored in Biochemistry in college but I never saw this. Perhaps I would have had to have taken a history of science course. Even then. I knew about the butterfl...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Larry Markley rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is a fantastic introduction to chaos in all of its form, splendor, and (not to be redundant) complexity. I read Gleick's book for my First Year Seminar in college. I know that many of the students in my class were put off by this book and thought it was too technical. However, I can remember two students (one of which was me) that were at least a little inspired. I went on to study physics, the other went on to study the philosophy of science. I can't speak for that individual, but I s...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Patrick rated it 1 of 5 stars

Chaos is all about the new profound science whose name used to be an oxymoron; chaos theory. It is mainly about how even the dropping of water has no steady rate, nor the heartbeat, or the pulsing of a light. The chaos theory seems to relate to everything, including: physiology, ecology, fluid physics, geometry, meteorology, and even grammar. Just kidding about the grammar, now I have already made more jokes than the entire book!
I had no favorite part, because geometry is not my particular in...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Michael Quinn rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is a nice history of the emergence of a distinct scientific field. It is obviously geared towards a popular audience, which means that readers will receive anecdotes about the developments of different theories and fields without an in-depth discussion of the field itself. There are many concepts in the book (including universality and chaos itself - at least in the first half of the book), that would benefit from a thorough explanation.

That said, this book will change the way you see...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Ianw19 rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading Chaos will teach you that the world is neat and messy - predictable and unpredictable - the way you see it depends on how you look at it. For instance, the discussion of fractals will show you that there can be infinite space within a finite area. So, while you know when you reach into a box of chocolates that you're going to get chocolate, you still have no idea exactly what you're going to get: There is infinite "space" for possibilities within the finite categorical "area" of choc...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, nonfic-science, nonfic-computation

Chaos, the concept, is often explained in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, which tips some indescribable balance, leading to rain falling in another part of the world. It's an overworn cliche by now, but one that still gets to the heart of a quality of nature that scientists and mathematicians prior to the 20th century didn't really grasp. It was hardly their fault. Living in the age of slide rules and tables (or before), they can't really be blamed for focusing...more Chaos, the concept, is often explained in terms of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, which tips some indescribable balance, leading to rain falling in another part of the world. It's an overworn cliche by now, but one that still gets to the heart of a quality of nature that scientists and mathematicians prior to the 20th century didn't really grasp. It was hardly their fault. Living in the age of slide rules and tables (or before), they can't really be blamed for focusing on phenomena that were predictable, linear, and led to stable outcomes, and ignoring those that seemed too noisy, erratic, and error-prone to be represented with an equation.

Yet, as the age of computers dawned, it became clear that the "noise" in many natural systems wasn't error at all, but held its own elusive underlying order. The feedback loops in these systems would magnify initial discrepancies over time, but they would also perform a sort of self-correction, giving rise to repeated patterns and patterns-within-patterns -- similar, like the shape of clouds, but never exactly the same. It's now apparent that this complex dance between coherence and instability, between the macroscopic and the microscopic, drives many of nature's most interesting phenomena, from the branching of blood vessels into smaller ones, to how particles of smoke curl around each other, to the way a snowflake's shape reflects its journey through the atmosphere. Human consciousness itself seems to be an example of a chaotic, endlessly self-referential system.

Chaos, the book, though written in 1987, still does an excellent job of connecting the discoveries that opened the door to Chaos Theory. Gleick introduces us to figures like Edward Lorenz, whose work in weather prediction revealed that tiny differences in input in even simple mathematical models could lead to vast differences in output over time; Robert May, who discovered chaotic patterns in population dynamics; and Benoit Mandelbrot, now considered the father of fractals. Along the way, he touches on fundamental concepts like strange attractors, fractal dimension, bifurcation, complex boundaries, and the Mandlebrot set (whose astonishing visual representation you've seen if you’ve set foot in a poster shop in the last 25 years).

This is one of those books I'd recommend to people who already have some familiarity with the topic. While its purpose is introductory and there's little math, per se, I think the underlying profundities will be more obvious to readers who have taken a college-level math course or two or three. That disclaimer aside, I found Gleick's writing articulate, and seldom had much trouble visualizing what he was talking about, even listening to the audiobook. It's worth having the print edition on hand for the pictures and diagrams, but if you don't, the internet should suffice.

Despite being 25 years old, Chaos remains an invigorating read, offering a sense of discoveries and inventions yet to be made, and demonstrating that separate fields like physics, chemistry, biology, information theory, computing, cognitive science, climatology, and economics aren't as separate as we might think. As bonus, a 2000s-era afterward in the audiobook provides a brief update of progress in some areas since the book's original publication, and some thoughts on its cultural impact.(less)

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Nov 07, 2012 Shawn rated it 3 of 5 stars

I admit, about 40 or so pages in I almost stopped reading. The front cover had a quote from the New York Times that said "Almost every paragraph contains a jolt." I wasn't feeling it. But I plodded onward and kept reading, and I did start to find some fascinating stuff. Chaos theory--you know, the butterfly beats its wings in China and causes a hurricane in the US? Actually, it is more than that--a lot more. The book got into a section on fractals, and that is the first portion that caused me to...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Nilesh rated it 5 of 5 stars

The sad thing is that I lived so much of life without ever coming across fractals.

I have not learned as much new in a single book ever. From the coastline length concept to Mandlebrot Sets, Feibengaum constants to Lorenz attractors, Julia sets and Cantor sets, the world of non-linear mathematics that is even at the fringe of linear mathematic is deep and beautiful (literally). The concepts of fractional dimensions, bounded areas with infinite perimeters, mode-locking, bifurcations, Newton fracta...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Kevin Zelnio rated it 4 of 5 stars

From my review on Amazon:
Drawing on examples form biology to astronomy, Gleick manages to make a complicated subject appealing to people from all scientific and mathematical backgrounds. I would not reccomend this book for the general layperson though, unless that person has a sincere scientific interest.

Gleick's logic is easy to follow and Appears complete. Though drawing from so many examples, I sometimes had the feeling that parts were repetitive. I did appreciate his thorough history of "Mak...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: the literate.

reads like a documentary into the creation of a new science, a (I hate saying this, so overused) paradigm shifting look at how we think of complex systems. A must read for anyone into any of the sciences, they all apply equally well and are all a part of the history of chaos.
In a nutshell, chaos is a state brought about by deterministic equations (think about that) that do not settle into an equilibrium and do not display a coherent pattern.
An example frequently cited is the weather.
Basically,...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Doug Dillon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Chaos Theory explained in terms you can understand. Author James Gleick leads the reader in an exploration of patterns that lie just beneath the surface of what appears to be total randomness. His discussions about finding order in abundantly unexpected places adds a comforting depth to the universe we thought we knew.

Gleick's use of graphics, especially fractals, to explain this mathematically driven concept, greatly benefits math challenged people like myself. His use of short, attractive chap...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Lis Carey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, popular-science

This book, over two decades old now, is one of the great classics of science popularization. It was a blockbuster bestseller at the time, and it's still well worth reading, a fascinating, enjoyable introduction to one of the most important scientific developments of our time--the birth of chaos theory.

One of the compelling features of the chaos story is that this scientific breakthrough wasn't a physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, or biology breakthrough; it was all of them. A mathematic...more This book, over two decades old now, is one of the great classics of science popularization. It was a blockbuster bestseller at the time, and it's still well worth reading, a fascinating, enjoyable introduction to one of the most important scientific developments of our time--the birth of chaos theory.

One of the compelling features of the chaos story is that this scientific breakthrough wasn't a physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, or biology breakthrough; it was all of them. A mathematician turned meteorologist, Edward Lorenz, builds a "toy weather" on what's still a fairly early computer in the early 1960s, and in working with the parameters, concludes that long-term weather forecasting is doomed--a simple deterministic system is producing unpredictable results. Mitchell Feigenbaum, a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos in the early seventies, and two other scientists working together independently of him, are working on the problem of turbulence and.discover that it doesn't, as anticipated, build up gradually in an orderly manner. Reach the tipping point, and there it is.
Beloit Mandelbrot, an IBM mathematician working with an equation that produces fractals, arrives to give a presentation to an economics class and finds "his" equation already on the board; the patterns he's found in pure path also apply in economics, the reproductive rates and numbers of animal populations, and countless other places.

In each field, also, the initial work was most often either resisted or ignored. Precisely because chaos was popping up all over, with just a few people in each of many different scientific fields, it was easy for scientists in any field to notice a paper or presentation, note the fact that is was completely different from the methods, logic, math that had relevance for their own work, that much of the work was in fact being done in other fields--and dismiss it. For new doctoral students, there were no mentors in chaos theory, no jobs, no journals devoted to chaos theory. It completely upended ideas about how the natural world worked. It was heady, exciting--and much harder to explain than to demonstrate. Much of what the first generation of chaos scientists did is incredibly easy to demonstrate with a laptop computer today--but most of these chaos pioneers were working with handheld calculators, mainframe computers with dump terminals and limited and unreliable access for something so peripheral to the institution's perceived mission, computers whose only output device was a plotter.

Gleick very effectively conveys the science, the excitement the early scientists working on it felt, and the challenges that faced them.

Highly recommended.
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Jul 24, 2012 Reed rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-science, math

Very exciting book to read. James Gleick does an excellent job of dressing perverse mathematical concepts in approachable attire. This book has definitely expanded my perception of the universe in an unexpected way: it has made me appreciate what's directly in front of my face.

"Douady and Hubbard used a brilliant chain of new mathematics to prove that every floating molecule does indeed hang on a filigree that binds it to all the rest, a delicate web springing from tiny outcroppings on the main...more

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Jun 17, 2011 مرتضى أحمد rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

للوهلة الأولى لدى تصفحك للكتاب ستظن أن الترجمة سيئة للغاية ؛ لعدم فهمك أي شيء، ولكن بعد مضيك قدماً للفصل الثاني أو الثالث ستعرف أن الكتاب برمته بالنسبة لك فادح السوء.

برأيي أنه ليس فادح السوء بذاته و لكنه سيء لقارئ عادي فهو يصلح للعلماء الفيزيائين وليس للهواة أو الراغبين بالزيادة الثقافية.

فكرة الكتاب العامة :

تدور فكرته حول جانب من جوانب علم الفيزياء الغامضة جداً بالنسبة للعلماء و التي أقعدتهم على حيرة ، وهي كيفية تأثير الأشياء على بعضها البعض و عدم تأثيرها أيضا ،وكل شيء فيزيائي أيضا !! (هذا ما فه...more

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May 25, 2012 Mac rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don’t tend to read many books about science – not for lack of interest, really, but because they seem to be out-of-date almost immediately after printing. So this book, originally written in 1988 about a “new” science from the 1960’s and ‘70’s, was one I looked at a bit sideways. However, it had an afterword for the 20th anniversary in there (which, of course, is now four years out-of-date), so it can’t be so behind the times that it was swept under the rug. However, since I’m very interested...more I don’t tend to read many books about science – not for lack of interest, really, but because they seem to be out-of-date almost immediately after printing. So this book, originally written in 1988 about a “new” science from the 1960’s and ‘70’s, was one I looked at a bit sideways. However, it had an afterword for the 20th anniversary in there (which, of course, is now four years out-of-date), so it can’t be so behind the times that it was swept under the rug. However, since I’m very interested in complex systems theory and chaotic behavior in complex systems, but at the same time have a complete fear of mathematical equations, it turns out this book was pitched at exactly the speed I was looking for.

Gleick knows that his audience is full of non-specialists, and so the focus is on the narrative of how chaos theory and its many parts arrived on the scene. Unsurprisingly, it was met with not a little resistance, especially considering the overlap so much of it had between various disciplines. Physicists should not be studying biology; mathematicians should not be studying the weather, &c., &c. Of course, if something as pedestrian as common sense were to be applied to “science” as a whole, one might immediately assume that these disciplines overlap, to a very considerable degree, in what we like to call “the world.” Biological processes are employing chemical reactions which are related to physical behaviors of atoms and all of these come together to form a complex system that does not really care whether its behavior can be described by a physicist at UC Santa Cruz or a meteorologist at MIT – it just happens. And chaos theory appears to be a solid way of understanding how these happenings come to be.

Aside from the personalities and narrative histories of the chaoticians whom Gleick describes (I’m told he’s unfairly tight-lipped about several important Soviet researchers, but in 1988 that hardly seems to be his fault), we do get a solid yet non-technical explanation of the many ideas lumped within the general term “chaos” – sensitive dependence on initial conditions, strange attractors, fractal geometry, and so on. The explanations here tend to be considerably more useful than the bafflingly stupid discussion Jeff Goldblum has with Laura Dern in ‘Jurassic Park,’ and have real-world implications for how to think about all of the science we’ve ever learned in school. (Remember how everything in physics class was worked out in a friction-less environment? Well, there’s no such thing, and maybe we should actually consider that.)

I didn’t walk away with any better understanding of a deterministic system or how a non-linear equation can be solved – some of the explications of these things could get a little heavy and dull, but I do feel like this is something important and exciting – it is, of course, very dangerous to make metaphors out of technical scientific ideas, but in many of these concepts that Gleick describes, you can almost feel the sense of them before you understand them intellectually. Whether you grasp all of the math or not, it’s clear that these guys are on to something.
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Dec 06, 2012 Donna Woodwell rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book came out in the late 80s, and I've crossed paths with it several times without reading it. I remember talking about it while eating dinner one day in the cafeteria with my physics teacher and some friends from class. And my ex-husband had it on his shelf and I never got around to reading it. I finally picked up my own copy a couple weeks ago.

Gleick is a fabulous writer. Though a popular science book can only gloss a highly technical subject, Gleick does it well. But I found this book...more

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Nov 08, 2010 Gendou rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, physics

Not so much a new science as an old obsession of a few mystics... :(

Gleick gives an unorganized overview some fun mathematical concepts like fractals, strange attractors, and chaos theory.
But he exaggerates the importance of these topics, presenting them as a holistic revolution in physics, overthrowing reductionism, which just isn't the case.
The last chapter was incomprehensible hippie mysticism, then the book just ended leaving me wondering what the whole point was.

It seems to me like this boo...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

In Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick tells us what chaos theory is, how it has been developing, and how it has spelled the end of the reductionist program in science. What is chaos theory? Some definitions near the end of the book include: “the complicated, aperiodic, attracting orbits of certain dynamical systems… A kind of order without periodicity… The irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems.”

Scientists’ previous beliefs concerning chaos have be...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Lise rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: physics, history

An interesting read that I missed at the time. It is a nice overview into the dynamics of nonlinear systems, and it is also definitely a product of it's time. At times, during this very detailed examination of the development of the science of Chaos, the author simply says things like "and a lot of work was being done in Russia" or "something similar had already been done in Russia", yet no details (beyond the name of one Russian scientist who developed a way of measuring fractional dimensions)...more

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Oct 21, 2011 Norman Parker rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Chaos" is a good narrative about the evolution of this new way of study. All along, science has battled with strange results in experimentation. Now there are ways to deal with and use such spurious data.

I wish that my high school physics and chemistry teachers would have grasped the methods of chaos-study and passed simple explanations of it along to me. It is truly a complex study method, yet its overreaching goal is to simplify. That simplification NEEDS to be passed along to high schoolers...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Nicholas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

At first I was put off by the age of this book, it being written in the mid 80's, then I did a few searches and found it still topped the charts in this particular area.
The book charts the history of the development of chaos theory from the first serious considerations of it in meteorology,to its general acceptance and applicability across the scientific community.It is as non-technical as its possible to be in subject of this nature and what mathematical explanations there are, are straight-...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Brian Burt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-physics-mathematics

Remember when you were in school and learned about linear equations and later on linear differential equations (a block on a spring is a classic textbook example) and you thought to yourself how elegantly this system is described by this equation? For the most part this thought recurred to me throughout my schooling and did not get any better when I had moved on to more advanced equations and mathematical models only to be presented with the ever-present qualifier that friction is ignored, or ai...more Remember when you were in school and learned about linear equations and later on linear differential equations (a block on a spring is a classic textbook example) and you thought to yourself how elegantly this system is described by this equation? For the most part this thought recurred to me throughout my schooling and did not get any better when I had moved on to more advanced equations and mathematical models only to be presented with the ever-present qualifier that friction is ignored, or air resistance is deemed negligible. Of course it was the aim of our educators to present the method of solution so that we could understand and apply it ourselves; this is not to be argued with, but anyone who went on to more real life and advanced studies soon came to realize how drastically myopic and frankly inapplicable these equations and methodologies are. Unfortunately, this is real life; this is how it goes. The real problems to be solved can very rarely be summed up in a nice compact and highly workable (and solvable) equation. As is clearly illustrated in this book most problems are actually nonlinear and thus have no explicit solution; and I'm not even talking quantum physics or anything as the "simple" pendulum model begins to stray from the elegant formulas that we've come to know.

The book shows the frustration of high level grad students when they must raise their arms in the air and cry out why did they even bother to present simple linear differential equations and ignore everything else: it's totally inapplicable. The book chronicles the advent of this new branch of study from the beloved pendulum to complex weather systems and finally to organic processes such as heart fibrillation and inferences as to why our society is degrading at the rate it is.

Another highlight of the work is that it is not nearly as dry as many other books on such subjects; Gleick has done a great job at presenting these pioneering mathematicians and physicists to us and they are indeed well drawn and human: they seem more like characters in a good novel rather than historical personages presented while reporting fact. The book does not delve into lengthy technical passages nor does it ever achieve the pedantic or the pretentious; a very assessable book for all.(less)

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Oct 04, 2010 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

Gleick is a great writer tackling a fascinating, free-wheeling subject here. I read this then re-read it a few years ago, and it's almost as interesting to see how the metaphors and frames of chaos/complexity theory have filtered into the broader culture as it is to read about how a new "science" comes into being. The seminal story Gleick tells here about a weather simulator that exhibited random behavior despite operating unflawed, and on a fixed set of variables, is great, not least because of...more

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May 11, 2013 Diana Cahill rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had read this book in a high school math class, and loved it then. Now I re-read it to better understand how Why Nations Fail is related to chaos theory, because I had forgotten some of the finer points.

James Gleick is a great author. He does an excellent job of interpreting abstract mathematics to the layperson in an intriguing and involving way. I am looking forward to his other books on information theory and Richard Feynman.

Note: if at all possible, get the print version of the book. The k...more

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May 19, 2013 Supermanoo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

كيف يمكن صنع نظام في عالم محكوم بالسير نحو التفكك والتشوّش..!

مايميز الكايوس أنه يلامس الواقع اللي بنعيش فيه ونشوفوا ونلمسوا في بعض الأحيان وتم شرح وتفسير بعض الظواهر الطبيعية وهو علم بيحاول يفسر أشياء العلماء في العلوم الآخرى بيهربوا منها مع أن الكايوس يحتاج لفهمه اتحاد فروع كثير من العلوم المختلفة

الكاتب أعتقد حاول انه يكون الكتاب في متناول فهم الإنسان العادي لكن أسترسل كثير في تفاصيل بعض المعادلات المستخدمة في فهم الكايوس وطريقة التجارب

::
* كل ماحاولت تتعمق في فهم شيء كل محاتتعقد الأمور وتطلعلك...more

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Mar 20, 2013 MikeFromQueens rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pretty good account of how we got from nowhere to here. A lot of deep dives into the theories posited by mathematicians with demonstrations methods described such I can follow the recipe. Because it was written as a history, there was a chronological order, and nothing theorized beyond what was published, and I accept that. But I still yearned for more, and will now have to research those branches and make the pieces fit into what I learned here. I need to know more about complexity and synchron...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Adeel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Perhaps the best introduction to the history and central ideas of Chaos Theory, in appropriate social and scientific context - suitable for laypeople and undergraduate scientists alike. However, some of the context (E.g. the rejection of the ideas of non-linearity in it's early days in physics and mathematics departments alike) may be misinterpreted by someone not acquainted with mainstream physics/mathematics techniques.

This is not a technical introduction, so dont expect to *learn* nonlinear d...more

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About James Gleick

James Gleick (born August 1, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology. Three of these books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists, and they have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in...more James Gleick (born August 1, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology. Three of these books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists, and they have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in English and linguistics. Having worked for the Harvard Crimson and freelanced in Boston, he moved to Minneapolis, where he helped found a short-lived weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise, he returned to New York and joined as staff of the New York Times, where he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter.

He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University in 1989-90. Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. In 1993, he founded The Pipeline, an early Internet service. Gleick is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.

His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a household phrase.

Among the scientists Gleick profiled were Mitchell Feigenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Feynman and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft anticipated the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Gleick's essays charting the growth of the Internet included the "Fast Forward" column on technology in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999 and formed the basis of his book What Just Happened. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Washington Post.

Bibliography:
1987 Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0140092501)
1990 (with Eliot Porter) Nature's Chaos, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0316609420)
1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Pantheon. (ISBN 0679747044)
1999 Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Pantheon. (ISBN 067977548X)
2000 (editor) The Best American Science Writing 2000, HarperCollins. (ISBN 0060957360)
2002 What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, Pantheon. (ISBN 0375713913)
2003 Isaac Newton, Pantheon. (ISBN 1400032954)
2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. (ISBN 9780375423727 )(less)

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Books by James Gleick

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

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“Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.” — 7 people liked it

“mandelbrot changed the way ibm's engineers thought about the cause of noise. bursts of errors had always sent the engineers looking for a man sticking a screwdriver somewhere.” — 1 person liked it

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