Key to the solution was the early use of computers to repeat simple calculations, very many times. The book describes how this tough problem was cracked by five theoreticians described herein with a novelist's eye. Implicitly, it shows how Newtonian mathematics has constrained physics (and science in general) to make simplifying assumptions that enable the calculus to become the universal tool-set of the scientific viewpoint. Now, this phenomenon helps explain the shape of clouds, smoke, water eddies, mountain ranges and coastlines. This concept opens up a new view of nature: where previously randomness had to be forced in to explain the unpredictable variations, now chaos is seen as spanning both order (patterns) and disorder. This is a difficult new concept that is still evolving but it popularized the term: Butterfly Effect and introduced new concepts to a popular audience, such as fractals and introduced pioneering thinkers, such as Feigenbaum and Mandelbrot it inspired the novel and movie Jurassic Park. This book describes the birth of the new theory of Chaos.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |