Sync Studies

The Cornell Daily Sun profiles Prof. Steven Strogatz, whose most recent book popularizes the science of spontaneous order.

[Via Ender's Review.]

Comments

[Warren]

Reads more like philosophy than science. There might be something to it, but you couldn't tell from that article.

[Jesse Walker]

Yeah, that's a problem with college papers. If you Google him, you'll find some more substantive stuff -- but nothing as recent as the Cornell piece.

[Chuck]

I taught a dynamical systems course several years ago, using the first (I think) textbook he wrote. It was one of the best-written textbooks I have ever used in 20 years of university teaching, and if this new book is half as engaging and lucid as that one was, it should easily be a best seller.

[Jason Ligon]

I have the feeling that, like quantum mechanics, this is a field that doesn't popularize well.

I remember reading Gleick's Chaos and coming away with all sorts of romantic notions that were dashed in about the first week of a non-linear dynamics class I took in college.

I don't really follow the connections between fractional dimensionality, complexity theory, self organization, and so on.

[Rick Barton]

I remember understanding Gleick's "Chaos" better and understanding a more quantitative treatment of it as well after I got the Gleick's Chaos software.

"we are now living through the birth of a subject that is bigger than physics because it includes physics."

That does sound pretty intriguing but I still haven't figured out how correct Wolfram is.

[carole]

If you want to check out Strogatz's writing in SYNC, you can read an excerpt of the first chapter -- it's on Popular Science's website

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/books/article/0,12543,430254-1-excerpt,00.html

and you can also read a review of the book there:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/books/article/0,12543,430254-1,00.html