Kathleen T. Alligood

Tim D. Sauer

James A. Yorke

Developed and class-tested by a distinguished team of authors at two universities, this text is intended for courses in nonlinear dynamics in either mathematics or physics. The only prerequisites are calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra. Along with discussions of the major topics, including discrete dynamical systems, chaos, fractals, nonlinear differential equations and bifurcations, the text also includes Lab Visits -- short reports that illustrate relevant concepts from the physical, chemical and biological sciences. There are Computer Experiments throughout the text that present opportunities to explore dynamics through computer simulations, designed for use with any software package. And each chapter ends with a Challenge, guiding students through an advanced topic in the form of an extended exercise.

An Introduction to Dynamical Systems

Chaos

James Gleick

Explains the meaning and application of chaos--the study of patterns emerging from seemingly random phenomena--and introduces the scientists responsible for major discoveries in this field.

Making a New Science

Razi Syed

Explains the meaning and application of chaos--the study of patterns emerging from seemingly random phenomena--and introduces the scientists responsible for major discoveries in this field

Gavin

Romantic, dramatic, constructive pop science: the physics, meteorology and maths in this was famed but not well-explained before this came out. The theme of the very different results presented here is unprecedented successes in recognising and explaining nonlinear systems. Very human: every researcher is profiled sensitively, generally as an outsider challenging the stuffy, desk-bound precepts of 'linear science'. Since ornery, heroic Mandelbrot is included here, you get an exciting ride even if you don't like maths or science or the world or the underlying generative process of all instances of beauty. 

"Chaos" is a bad name for the field: it implies randomness, indeterminism, intractability. Better to question why "order" can only refer to equilibrium or periodic patterns - why it is we think of order as boring. "Deterministic disorder" is more honest - and better yet is Lao-Bin's "order without periodicity".

Also, the diagrams are poor by contemporary standards: I had to stare at them for a while before grokking the concept.

Borne on what felt like an epochal wave, Gleick overreaches. He calls Smale and Mandelbrot "the end of the reductionist program in science". How is seeking and finding a precise (nonlinear) equation - which is the case in the work of all these men - for a system holist!? 

I don't actually know if the maths in here has changed everything: maybe it has, and they suffer from the Seinfeld effect for dynamical systems, seeming obvious after the fact. But I do know that the Santa Fe strain of work is more of a tolerated eccentric uncle than a science-upending behemoth.

Jeremy Cote

What a lovely book. James Gleick writes with pace, bringing the science to a general audience while still not shying away from the occasional equation or technical explanation. His writing has this great velocity to it, and I really enjoyed the book. The whole this is great. The only thing I could have wished for more was better explanations for some of the diagrams. Other than that, a great book.

shubham

This book brings together all the work in a new field of physics, the chaos theory, an extension of classical mechanics. The author shows how computers have been able to help researchers, by mapping the whole plane of solutions of non-linear equations.

Catarino

The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune). For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. But even as relativity and quantum mechanics undermined that rigid certainty in the first half of the twentieth century, the scientific community clung to the idea that any system, no matter how complex, could be reduced to a simple pattern. In the 1960s, a small group of radical thinkers began to take that notion apart, placing new importance on the tiny experimental irregularities that scientists had long learned to ignore. Miniscule differences in data, they said, would eventually produce massive ones—and complex systems like the weather, economics, and human behavior suddenly became clearer and more beautiful than they had ever been before. In this seminal work of scientific writing, James Gleick lays out a cutting edge field of science with enough grace and precision that any reader will be able to grasp the science behind the beautiful complexity of the world around us. With more than a million copies sold, Chaos is “a groundbreaking book about what seems to be the future of physics” by a writer who has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the author of Time Travel: A History and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Publishers Weekly).

Chaos An Introduction to Dynamical Systems

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