Deep Simplicity (Hardcover)

Hardcover. Over the past two decades, no field of scientific inquiry has had a more striking impact across a wide array of disciplinesfrom biology to physics, computing to meteorologythan 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 phenomenafrom 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 howfar from overturning all that has gone beforechaos 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. In the 1980s, a groundbreaking new idea sought to explain why the world is often unpredictable. An astrophysicist describes the principles behind chaos and complexity theory, and the tremendous achievements made over the past two decades in the applications of these theories. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…