Review by Sparkle
Where Chaos begins, classical science stops.
Chaos is a characteristic of the entire system of the Globe and the Cosmos. We live in Chaos, as much as we live by the laws of nature.
We can predict mutations within certain limits, but Chaos will give way to misinterpretations and incomprehensible events.
The irregular aspect of nature, its discontinuous and inconstant side, have been judged by science over time as torments or worse atrocities.
Relativity eliminated the Newtonian illusion of absolute space and time, quantum theory eliminated the Newtonian dream of a controllable measurement process while Chaos eliminates the Laplacian fantasy of deterministic predictability, that is, that the past and the future are determined by the present state of the system and each moment of the succession of time follows from the one that precedes it according to clear impersonal, quantitative rules.
Chaos science demonstrates that even deterministic systems can become unpredictable due to sensitivity to initial conditions, introducing a practical limit to predictability, although ontological determinism remains intact for classical physics, but not for quantum physics.
Chaos does not deny randomness, but our inability to predict perfectly, leading us to use probability.
The Lorenz Butterfly Effect, according to which the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Beijing can cause storm systems the following month in New York, shows that small variations in the initial conditions of the system can result in large and uncontrollable variations in the respective future evolutions of the system.
This concept of the science of Chaos acquired the technical name of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”: because of a nail the hoof was lost, because of a hoof the horse was lost, because of the horse the knight was lost, because of a knight the battle was lost, because of a battle the kingdom was lost.
A system that becomes unpredictable and therefore chaotic manifests itself in the disorder present in the atmosphere, in the confusion in the turbulent sea, in the imbalance of the fluctuations of the populations of animals and plants in the state of nature, in the arrhythmias of the heart and in the oscillations of the brain.
The new science has also generated a new vocabulary, a technical language of fractals and bifurcations, of intermittences and periodicities, strange attractors and bent deformities.
Given this, many became aware that not all systems are the same and that physics can take us up to a certain limit. Chaos materializes when anyone decides his route to go to work, you notice how an ascending column of cigarette smoke breaks into regular coils, it shows itself when a dripping tap goes from a regular rhythm to a random one, it is highlighted when a flag breaks under the force of the wind, it exists in the places where it usually frequents and this changes the course of the initial system on a daily basis.
Some systems never find equilibrium, and small fluctuations can alter an entire system.
Ultimately Chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being and this leads to epistemology.
James Gleick (born in New York in 1954) is neither a physicist nor a mathematician by training, but an exceptional journalist and essayist. Graduating from Harvard in 1976, he worked for ten years at New York Times, where he began to follow the trail of that “new science” that was emerging in the most disparate laboratories, from meteorology to biology.
Style and impact
Gleick’s strength lies in his ability to do narrative disclosure. In Chaos, does not just explain equations, but tells the human stories behind the discoveries: the intuitions, failures and academic resistances of pioneers such as Edward Lorenz or Benoit Mandelbrot.
“Gleick has a gift for making the invisible understandable, transforming the mathematics of turbulence into a gripping chronicle of the nature of reality.”
Beyond “Chaos”: The other works
The success of Chaos (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award) was not an isolated case. Gleick continued to explore how science and technology shape our perception of the world with other seminal texts:
Genius (1992): A monumental biography of Richard Feynman.
Faster (1999): An analysis of the acceleration of time in modern life.
The information (2011): An encyclopedic history of how data has changed human history.
Time Travel (2016): A literary and scientific exploration of the concept of the fourth dimension.
Today Gleick is considered one of the most influential chroniclers of modern scientific thought, capable of combining the rigor of investigation with the beauty of literary prose.
Published for the first time in 1987, the book received an extraordinary reception from both literary critics and the scientific community, a very rare result for a text that deals with non-linear dynamics.
Awards and Nominations
Pulitzer Prize Finalist (1988): In the non-fiction category (General Non-Fiction), an achievement that established Gleick as one of America’s best science writers.
National Book Award Finalist: One of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States.
Winner of the Rhone-Poulenc Prize (1989): Today known as Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize, is the highest international recognition for popular science books.