The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (Penguin Press Science S.)

by Ian Stewart (Author), Jack Cohen (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $4.38

  Moving on from his books on chaos ( Does God Play Dice? ) and symmetry ( Fearful Symmetry ), the author of this book deals with the wider field of complexity theory. The book tackles the question of how complexity arises in nature, of how life overcomes chaos and entropy to create developing order. Co-written with biologist Jack Cohen, the book will range across the central areas of modern science, from quantum mechanics and cosmology to evolution and intelligence, looking at the central questions of order, chaos, reductionism and complexity.

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $6.79

  Science's traditional answers to the question: How does complexity arise in nature? are given at the beginning of this book. It shows how intelligence and human culture can be traced back to atomic structure, reducing the whole of nature to simple laws of fundamental physics. However, the book then proceeds to show that How does complexity arise? is really the wrong question. It proposes that a more interesting question is Why do simple structures exist at all? . Scientific reductionism is useful but does not give the whole truth: it tells how but not why; it looks at insides but not outsides, content but not context. The subject-matter of traditional science is re-examined from a different viewpoint, focusing on the ability of complicated rules to generate simple behaviour, through the collapse of chaos .