Does God Play Dice?: The Mathematics of Chaos - Softcover

Stewart, Neil

4.02

1,640 ratings by Goodreads

9781557861061: Does God Play Dice?: The Mathematics of Chaos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557861064 ISBN 13: 9781557861061

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991

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Does God Play Dice?

Yes. But How? Einstein did not believe that 'God Plays Dice'. He laid the foundations for today's thinking that the universe is goverened by the immutable laws of physics- there is no room for chance.

But these foundations may be built on sand. The new science of chaos is forcing scientists to rethink even the most fundamental ideas about the way in which the universe behaves. Chaos thoery has already shown that the systems obeying precise laws can nevertheless act in a random manner. Perhaps God does play dice, within a cosmic game of complete law and order.

Does God Play Dice? explains the astonishing new theories of systems that obey simple laws but which are neither constant nor predictable. Ian Stewart reveals a strange universe. A universe in which nothing may be as it seems, where familiar geometrical shapes such as circles and ellipses give way to infinitely complex structures known as 'fractals'. He explains how the fluttering of a butterfly's wings can change the weather and how the gravitational attraction of a creature in a distant galaxy can change the fate of the solar system.

In terms that anyone can understand Does God Play Dice? tells the story of this entirely new science and the implications chaos has for notions of predictability and the verification of scientific theories.

Chaos is a whole new world of ideas and possibilities, a new kind of matementics, a fundamental insight into nature itself, and it brings us closer to an understanding of literally everything.

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Review:

We'd better get used to chaos because it certainly isn't going anywhere. Mathematician Ian Stewart--who is also a very talented writer--shares his insights into the history and nature of the highly complex in Does God Play Dice: The New Mathematics of Chaos. While his delightful phrasings will draw in nearly every reader, those with a strong aversion to figures and formulae should understand that it will be slow going. Chaos math suffuses everything from dreaming to the motion of the planets, and Stewart's words can never match the precision of his numbers. Persistence pays off, though; there are so many "aha" moments of insight herein that it almost qualifies as a religious text. The second edition has been partially revised in the wake of 1990s research, and three exciting new chapters report on prediction and other applications of chaos mathematics. --Rob Lightner

About the Author:

Ian Stewart is a Reader in Mathematics at the University of Warwick, where the subjects he has taught include the history of mathematcs, mathematics as culture, set and group theory, topology, applied sources of pure mathematics, and catastrophe theory. He has held visiting posts as a fellow and professor at T�bingen, Auckland, Storrs, Carbondale, and Houston Universities, and has lectured widely in Britain, Europe and North America. Besides his numerous scholarly publications his writings include Oh! Catastrophe, The Fractal Dimension and The Groups of Wrath (all first published in France), The Problems of Mathematics, science fiction stories (among them, The Microbotic Revolution) and articles in Scientific American, Nature, Pour la science, New Scientist, Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. He is European editor of the Mathematical Intelligencer, and has worked in radio and TV.

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