Deep Simplicity

Deep Simplicity
Title Deep Simplicity PDF eBook
Author John Gribbin
Publisher Penguin UK
Pages 451
Release 2009-08-27
Genre Science
ISBN 0141042214

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'Gribbin takes us through the basics with his customary talent for accessibility and clarity' Sunday Times The world around us can be a complex, confusing place. Earthquakes happen without warning, stock markets fluctuate, weather forecasters seldom seem to get it right - even other people continue to baffle us. How do we make sense of it all? In fact, John Gribbin reveals, our seemingly random universe is actually built on simple laws of cause and effect that can explain why, for example, just one vehicle braking can cause a traffic jam; why wild storms result from a slight atmospheric change; even how we evolved from the most basic materials. Like a zen painting, a fractal image or the pattern on a butterfly's wings, simple elements form the bedrock of a sophisticated whole. Synthesizing chaos and complexity theory for the perplexed, Deep Simplicity brilliantly illuminates the harmony underlying our existence.

Deep Simplicity

Deep Simplicity
Title Deep Simplicity PDF eBook
Author John Gribbin
Publisher Random House
Pages 306
Release 2005-04-05
Genre Science
ISBN 140006256X

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Over the past two decades, no field of scientific inquiry has had a more striking impact across a wide array of disciplines–from biology to physics, computing to meteorology–than that known as chaos and complexity, the study of complex systems. Now astrophysicist John Gribbin draws on his expertise to explore, in prose that communicates not only the wonder but the substance of cutting-edge science, the principles behind chaos and complexity. He reveals the remarkable ways these two revolutionary theories have been applied over the last twenty years to explain all sorts of phenomena–from weather patterns to mass extinctions. Grounding these paradigm-shifting ideas in their historical context, Gribbin also traces their development from Newton to Darwin to Lorenz, Prigogine, and Lovelock, demonstrating how–far from overturning all that has gone before–chaos and complexity are the triumphant extensions of simple scientific laws. Ultimately, Gribbin illustrates how chaos and complexity permeate the universe on every scale, governing the evolution of life and galaxies alike.

Complexity

Complexity
Title Complexity PDF eBook
Author M. Mitchell Waldrop
Publisher Open Road Media
Pages 492
Release 2019-10-01
Genre Science
ISBN 150405914X

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“If you liked Chaos, you’ll love Complexity. Waldrop creates the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post). In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell—and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. This book is their story—the story of how they have tried to forge what they like to call the science of the twenty-first century. “Lucidly shows physicists, biologists, computer scientists and economists swapping metaphors and reveling in the sense that epochal discoveries are just around the corner . . . [Waldrop] has a special talent for relaying the exhilaration of moments of intellectual insight.” —The New York Times Book Review “Where I enjoyed the book was when it dove into the actual question of complexity, talking about complex systems in economics, biology, genetics, computer modeling, and so on. Snippets of rare beauty here and there almost took your breath away.” —Medium “[Waldrop] provides a good grounding of what may indeed be the first flowering of a new science.” —Publishers Weekly

Simplifying Complexity: Life is Uncertain, Unfair and Unequal

Simplifying Complexity: Life is Uncertain, Unfair and Unequal
Title Simplifying Complexity: Life is Uncertain, Unfair and Unequal PDF eBook
Author Bruce J. West
Publisher Bentham Science Publishers
Pages 299
Release 2016-08-03
Genre Science
ISBN 1681082179

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In life, we often face unavoidable complexities in terms of our ability to understand or influence outcomes. Some questions which arise due to these complexities are: Why can’t the future be made certain? Why do the some people or events always end up at the center of controversy? Why do only a select few get ahead of their peers? Each question pertains to three central elements of complexities and these elements are: uncertainty, inequality and unfairness. Simplifying Complexity explains the scientific study of complex cognitive networks, as well as the methods scientists use to parse difficult problems into manageable pieces. Readers are introduced to scientific methodology and thought processes, followed by a discourse on perspectives on the three elements of complexity through concepts such as normal and non-normal statistics, scaling and complexity management. Simplifying Complexity combines basic cognitive science and scientific philosophy for both advanced students (in the fields of sociology, cognitive science, complex networks and change management) and for general readers looking for a more scientific guide to understanding and managing the nature of change in a complex world.

A Matter of Degrees

A Matter of Degrees
Title A Matter of Degrees PDF eBook
Author Gino Segre
Publisher Penguin
Pages 321
Release 2003-07-01
Genre Science
ISBN 1101640170

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In a wonderful synthesis of science, history, and imagination, Gino Segrè, an internationally renowned theoretical physicist, embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of how the fundamental scientific concept of temperature is bound up with the very essence of both life and matter. Why is the internal temperature of most mammals fixed near 98.6°? How do geologists use temperature to track the history of our planet? Why is the quest for absolute zero and its quantum mechanical significance the key to understanding superconductivity? And what can we learn from neutrinos, the subatomic "messages from the sun" that may hold the key to understanding the birth-and death-of our solar system? In answering these and hundreds of other temperature-sensitive questions, Segrè presents an uncanny view of the world around us.

Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences

Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences
Title Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences PDF eBook
Author David Byrne
Publisher Routledge
Pages 215
Release 2002-01-04
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1134714742

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Chaos and complexity are the new buzz words in both science and contemporary society. The ideas they represent have enormous implications for the way we understand and engage with the world. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences introduces students to the central ideas which surround the chaos/complexity theories. It discusses key concepts before using them as a way of investigating the nature of social research. By applying them to such familiar topics as urban studies, education and health, David Byrne allows readers new to the subject to appreciate the contribution which complexity theory can make to social research and to illuminating the crucial social issues of our day.

Six Impossible Things

Six Impossible Things
Title Six Impossible Things PDF eBook
Author John Gribbin
Publisher MIT Press
Pages 104
Release 2019-10-08
Genre Science
ISBN 0262043238

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“An elegant and accessible” investigation of quantum mechanics for non-specialists—“highly recommended” for students of the sciences, sci-fi fans, and anyone interested in the strange world of quantum physics (Forbes) Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves—or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. In this concise and engaging book, astrophysicist John Gribbin offers an overview of six of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics. Gribbin calls his account “agnostic,” explaining that none of these interpretations is any better—or any worse—than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed “excess baggage” by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation (“incoherent”); the Ensemble “Non-Interpretation”; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others—but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.