Searching for Certainty; What Scientists Can Know About the Future

This journey through randomness, prediction, and chaos investigates developmental biology, weather prediction, mathematics, economics, and games of chance, showing why some future prediction systems work better than others

The author of Paradigms Lost and Alternative Realities shakesthe reputation of mathematics as the irresistible force of scientificexploration in this lively series of lectures on everyday systems(like weather forecasting and the stock market) that refuse to yieldto predictability. Casti's casual, wide-ranging command of numbertheory makes his working metaphors, such as a "Chocolate Cake Machine"analogy for algorithms, seem patronizingly simple, but this friendlytouch ensures that even the casual science reader may peek over theedge of the mathematic reality that today's theorists live on. Thefive frontiers of prediction covered here represent a spectrum ofsciences from sociobiology to the nature of computationitself. Ironically, several of Casti's cases are so well-developedthat even his concise, simplified expositions obscure the book's realtheme: we are approaching the limits of reliability inscience. Readers of Martin Gardner's recreational mathtitles--Mathematical Carnival etc.--will recognize the spell ofnumbers that holds this collection together. Illustrations not seen byPW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Casti earned much notice for his Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science ( LJ 6/15/89), and this new book is in something of the same mold. Here, he assesses current methods of forecasting and future prediction for the weather, evolutionary biology, the stock market, the outbreak of war, and mathematical proofs. His point is that an objective evaluation of the methods used to predict events should indicate how likely such predictions are to come true. His historical research is often interesting, and his knowledge of arcana can be encyclopedic. He can also lose even the most earnest reader in a thicket of formulae and statistical analysis, making this a difficult book to read, understand, and absorb. For informed laypersons or specialists.
-Mark L. Shelton, Athens, Ohio
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.