★★☆☆☆ Good on the facts, bad on interpretation

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick

Chaos: Making a New Science was the first book by James Gleick I read. I read one other book of his subsequently, his biography of Richard Feynman, Genius. I hope never to read another book by Gleick, because, while informative, they are annoying and misleading.

What I liked about Chaos: I learned a lot about the history of chaos theory research by reading Chaos. For instance, I didn't realize that as great deal of chaos research was done at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I even learned a little about chaos theory, but not much, because it's a subject I have been interested in for many years.

What I didn't like: Gleick tells about chaos research as a Scientific Revolution, of the type Thomas S. Kuhn wrote about in his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is my opinion that Kuhn was mostly wrong. But that is less important than the observation that chaos research clearly was not a scientific revolution of the type described by Kuhn. It was exciting mainstream mathematical research that was welcomed and encouraged by the math establishment. I was there and watching.

I was a 20-year-old brand-new grad student when Robert M. May published his famous 1976 Nature review paper, "Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics". This paper is now esteemed a classic of chaos research. It described the onset of chaos in what we now call the Logistic Map, one of the simplest chaotic systems. May left a lot unexplained, because at that time no one understood the Logistic Map or chaos very well. I thought it was a terrific paper. I gobbled it down with enthusiasm and for weeks after bored my fellow grad students (who, being Biochemistry students were less interested in math than I) by gassing about it.

In 1981 Douglas R. Hofstadter wrote an excellent column in Scientific American on the subject of "Strange attractors: mathematical patterns delicately poised between order and chaos", which once again tackled the logistic map, but with far more resolution, since chaos research had progressed a lot in the meantime. Hofstadter was able at this time to point out the connection to fractals and to mention Benoît B. Mandelbrot. "Strange attractors" was an installment of Hofstadter's monthly recreational mathematics column "Metamagical Themas".

By 1986 it had become clear that the logistic map is closely connected to a particular fractal, the Mandelbrot Set. Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter H. Richter produced a book, The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex Dynamical Systems, of beautiful pictures of the Mandelbrot set and other fractals, and Mandelbrot screensavers were seen on computers all over the world. Also in 1986 Scientific American published a regular research article on chaos theory simply entitled "Chaos" that extended it beyond the logistic map. Gleick published Chaos in 1987.

I mentioned these things to make a point. If your field of research is introduced by a review article in Nature (there was in 1976 no more prestigious venue for a scientific publication), is written up in the world's best-known popular mathematics column, is published in a full research paper in Scientific American, and is the source of screensavers and a coffee table book of pictures, you are not the Plucky Young Revolutionaries -- you're the Entrenched Establishment.

Now, Gleick did not entirely imagine the revolutionary narrative. In my experience, chaologists were (and are) apt to whine about old-time mathematicians who fail to recognize the significance of their (the chaologists') work. But, Mr Gleick, have you met humans? Feeling underappreciated is their thing! Well, it's ONE of their things. Of course, they didn't entirely imagine the resistance, some old-time mathematicians didn't fully appreciate chaos theory at the start, although my impression is that the resistance was mainly against the practice of doing math by computer, not chaos theory itself. Conservative reaction to novelty is another of those human things. And of course the chaologists would complain, because complaining is yet another of those human things.

Gleick is too credulous. I'm not suggesting that anyone meant to fool Gleick, but in looking for a Good Story he nevertheless fooled himself. He took the whining at face value and improved it with Kuhnian special sauce.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★☆☆ Music with rocks in

Soul Music Terry Pratchett Soul Music is the 16th novel in Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, and also the third novel in the DEATH subseries. Discworld is a long series -- 41 novels, not to mention the inevitable short stories. Any series so long is bound to be a little repetitive at times. Soul Music seemed to me a kind of rehash of Moving Pictures , on the one hand, and Mort on the other. Death (the Discworld character) is always slacking off. He gets tired of being Death and tries to take a vacation. The problem with Death taking a vacation is that he is what, these days, we call an essential worker. If Death takes time off, someone needs to fill in for him. In Mort that was Death's new apprentice Mort -- in Soul Music it is Susan, the daughter of Mort and Death's adopted daughter Ysabell. Susan is thus Death's granddaughter. The problem with putting a human in Death's job, ...

★★★★☆ Lada the Impaleress

And I Darken Kiersten White Vlad Dracula , also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad III of Wallachia, was the Voivode (ruler) of Wallachia (a part of what is now Romania) between 1448 and 1477. He was a contemporary of Mehmed the Conqueror , the sultan of the Ottoman Empire (which became Turkiye) who eventually conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, as They Might be Giants reminds us), ending the Byzantine Empire. It was an exciting time in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe! A historical novel about Vlad and Mehmed thus seems like a great idea. What we have here, however, is close to, but not exactly that. Kiersten White 's Conqueror's Saga , of which And I Darken is the first book, is an alternative history version of that time and place. The "alternative" part comes in the shape of Ladislav (that's a feminine form of "Vlad"). In And I Darken the first child of Vlad II (who in the real world was the father of Vlad...

★★★★☆ A downtrodden hero and troll

Troll Bridge Terry Pratchett Cohen the Barbarian's father told him, he told him, "Son, when you can face down a troll in single combat, then you can do anything." Cohen wants to defeat a troll in single combat before he dies. But the task is beginning to look urgent. First, Cohen is no longer a young hero. As Cohen's horse tells him, "One day you're going to die. It might be today." That's the first problem. The second is that troll bridges are in short supply. As Cohen tells his horse, When did you last see a bridge with a troll under it? There were hundreds of 'em when I was a lad. Now there's more trolls in the cities than there are in the mountains. So, he's found an old stone bridge that still has a troll. The troll's name is Mica. Like Cohen, Mica is himself a relic of the old days. He is still proud to uphold the old trollish tradition of defending a bridge. What's more, he's chuffed at the prospect of being killed by a...

★★☆☆☆ Misery, Canadian style

The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories Margaret Atwood (Editor), Robert Weaver (Editor) I read The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories , (eds Margaret Atwood , Robert Weaver ) because it is the textbook for a community college course I've registered for this winter called "Writing Short Stories". This is one of the worst short story collections I have ever read in my life. I noticed early on that it appeared to be the same story over and over again. A man and a woman are trapped in a desperately unhappy marriage. Maybe something happens, or maybe not. It is evident that for Atwood and Weaver plot is entirely optional. Some of the stories had one, and some did not. There were rare exceptions to the desperately unhappy marriage storyline, in which the characters were miserable for other reasons. You know that feeling of relief as you approach the end of a really bad book? I had that feeling 45 times in rapid succession as I worked my ...

★★★★★ A brilliant mess

Long Live Evil Sarah Rees Brennan The publisher's blurb for Sarah Rees Brennan 's Long Live Evil makes it sound like a funny book about a real-world character who slips into a book and finds herself the villain. And it IS that! There were many laugh-out-loud moments, such as this one Books often described kisses as ‘searing’ which made Rae think of salmon, but characters seemed to enjoy the seared-salmon kisses. or this “You saw this horse born,” Marius reminded ... “I told you his bloodline could find their way anywhere. You named him.” “That was a joke,” ... Marius didn’t see what was humorous. He’d thought it was a nice name. ... “So this is my noble steed, Google Maps?” Rae, our heroine/villainess, is a fantasy book lover, who knows all the plot tropes, not to mention the movies and songs. Plugged into a fantasy novel (à la Inkworld or Thursday Next -- both are referenced in the Acknowledgments) Rae reacts like the thoroughly modern young wo...

★★★☆☆ Velveteen returns!

Velveteen vs Gainful Employment Seanan McGuire Velveteen vs Gainful Employment is Seanan McGuire 's October 2023 Patreon reward. Velveteen is the hero of a series of quite old stories by Seanan McGuire , notionally published in three books: Velveteen vs The Junior Super Patriots , Velveteen vs The Multiverse , and Velveteen vs The Seasons . I say "notionally published" because most of these books are no longer available as books. You can still find the stories online however. If you click on the links for the books in the previous sentence, they will take you to my reviews of the books on Goodreads, and in each review there is a list of links to free online copies of the chapters. They are a lot of fun. Velveteen, AKA Velma Martinez, is a superhero whose superpower is the ability to animate dolls, stuffed animals, etc, and make them do her bidding. Used imaginatively this is a pretty awesome superpower that has allowed Velveteen to win most of her battles. The last sto...

★★★★☆ She was Joan of Arc. She was Athena. She was the Wendy.

The Wendy Erin Michelle Sky, Steven Brown I am a fan of J.M. Barrie 's Peter Pan . His dark view of childhood is refreshing, if you have met too many angelic children in literature. Seriously, J.M. Barrie uses the word "heartless" eight times to describe children. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked. (Do your own research! Here is the Project Gutenberg full text of Peter Pan . Do a text search for "heartless.") An even stronger selling point for The Wendy was the striking cover -- -- yeah, absolutely I want to read that! Don't judge a book by its cover, they say, but every now and then I do, and I am seldom misled. To be honest, The Wendy is not much like Peter Pan . Wendy D...

★★★☆☆ More a themed collection of stories than a novel

When the Moon Hits Your Eye John Scalzi I found myself disappointed by John Scalzi 's When the Moon Hits Your Eye . That's mainly because I was hoping for a novel and didn't quite get one. In his acknowledgments, Scalzi summarizes the structure of Moon ...a book about the moon turning to cheese, have each chapter represent a day in the lunar cycle, each chapter with mostly different characters in mostly different places in the Unites States, reacting to it in ways specific to them alone... Now, Moon does in fact have a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and and end. The problem is that, told as it is, in short day-in-the-life stories with mostly different characters each, it doesn't have the stakes that make a novel really interesting. We don't spend enough time with any of these characters to get to know and care about them. That at least, was how I felt. Instead, it felt to me like a themed short story collection. Some of the stories w...

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

★★★★☆ Two seriously messed-up people

Paladin's Grace T Kingfisher Stephen is a seriously messed-up guy. He is, or was, a paladin of the Saint of Steel. He bore within him a soul connection to his god, the Saint of Steel, who would use him to do good. Three years ago Stephen's god died, and since then he has been an empty man. He, and all the paladins of the late Saint of Steel, worry that if they lose control of their passions, they will be taken by "the tide" and run berserk, killing and destroying. This is not idle worry. It has happened, although not recently. Grace is a seriously messed-up woman, though she is arguably less messed up than Stephen. She grew up in an orphanage. She was, for all practical purposes, purchased by a master perfumer, who took advantage of her acute olfactory abilities without apparently feeling any obligation to treat her as a teacher should treat a student. He sold her to another perfumer who, in addition to taking advantage of her abilities, took advantage of her sexually...

Search This Blog