Pagetitle: Jason Cain

Review

Rating: 8

I’ve been interested in complex dynamics and chaos since I read James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science in high school. Edward Lorenz, a professor of meteorology at MIT, was one of the first to understand that chaos in all kinds of systems might be much more common than previously thought and that there might be deeper levels of understanding that can be gained about such systems. As such, he is widely regarded as one of the fathers of chaos theory as it is currently understood.

The Essence of Chaos starts off with a few examples of how chaotic behavior can arise from a seemingly trivial setup. Chaos, in this sense, refers to any dynamic system that exhibits “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” That is, even though two points in the system may start off close together, after sufficient time has passed they are no more likely to remain close together than any two points chosen at random. From here, Lorenz goes into more depth about the complex dynamic system that inspired his early work, the Earth’s weather system, and the ramifications of chaos theory for weather prediction. He concludes with some other examples of chaos at work in other fields, and general thoughts on chaos.

I found the latter parts of the book the most interesting, beginning with the chapter on weather. The Essence of Chaos does not attempt to be a reference on the history of chaos theory or cover all the different branches. Rather, it is a personal view of the field filled with anecdotes, a fact the author readily admits. Lorenz has a clear writing style, and does a good job of giving intuitive explanations. In fact, there are no equations to be found in any chapter of the book, although they are available in an appendix for the interested reader. This is the main strength of the book, in my opinion: a clear, concise discussion of what chaos is, illustrated with a few examples and presented in an unintimidating manner. A few cool pictures and diagrams don’t hurt, either.