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Cover of Chaos: Making a New Science

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick

ScienceSystems & Complexity
Publish date
1987
Publisher
Sphere Books
Description
James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science chronicles the development of chaos theory, tracing how researchers across disciplines like meteorology, mathematics, and biology discovered order beneath seemingly random phenomena. The book outlines core concepts of the field, including deterministic chaos, sensitivity to initial conditions, strange attractors, and fractal geometry. It explains how these discoveries challenged traditional reductionist models by demonstrating that simple nonlinear systems can yield vast complexity. Written for general readers and science enthusiasts, the text provides an accessible historical overview of the discipline and the scientists who shaped it.
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Books cited in Chaos: Making a New Science

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  1. Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems

    Robert M. May

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    Classic text demonstrating how simple nonlinear biological models generate unexpectedly chaotic population dynamics.

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  2. Order Out of Chaos

    Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers

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    Influential work analyzing self-organization, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and emergent macroscopic order.

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  3. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    Thomas S. Kuhn

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    Foundational text on paradigm shifts, framing Gleick's narrative of the chaos revolution.

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  4. The Geometry of Biological Time

    Arthur T. Winfree

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    Key biological study exploring non-linear rhythms and mathematical topologies in living organisms.

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  5. The Fractal Geometry of Nature

    Benoit B. Mandelbrot

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    Seminal treatise establishing fractal geometry, extensively detailed in Gleick's chapter on Mandelbrot.

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  6. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

    Douglas R. Hofstadter

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    Influential work exploring recursion and strange loops, closely linked to early chaos concepts.

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  7. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

    Norbert Wiener

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    Foundational work on feedback mechanisms that laid groundwork for modern dynamical systems theory.

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  8. Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior

    Ralph H. Abraham and Christopher D. Shaw

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    Visual guide that helped popularize geometric intuition in nonlinear dynamical systems.

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  9. On Growth and Form

    D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

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    Classic study of biological morphogenesis that foreshadowed geometric approaches to natural forms.

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  10. Structural Stability and Morphogenesis

    René Thom

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    Pioneering mathematical text introducing catastrophe theory and dynamical systems topology.

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