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Why does time seem to fly on some occasions and drag on others?
Why do some societies seem more prone to totalitarianism than others? Why does
atonal music sound "worse" to most of us than traditional music? How
can a butterfly in Brazil affect the weather in Alaska? The
set of ingenious interdisciplinary approaches that are, together, called the science
of complexity offers answers to these and dozens of other questions that beg the
larger question of why our universe seems so paradoxical. John L. Casti, renowned
mathematician and science writer, argues that a complexity that defies human logic
is only natural, and he shows directly, engagingly, and with a wealth of illustrations
how complexity arises and how it works. Casti explores several types of phenomena
that have, until now, consistently eluded science's attempts to understand them:
- the catastrophic, where a tiny change in a system
produces a huge effect (as happens in earthquakes and political revolutions);
- the
chaotic, which includes odd correlations like the ones that make predicting the
weather or the stock market so difficult;
- paradox,
in which you follow a commonsense rule and still something weird happens (the
more lanes you add to a freeway, for example, the bigger the traffic jams);
- the
irreducible, where, as in novels, symphonies, and baseball games, the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts;
- the emergent,
in which a pattern, like life itself, seems to arise from out of nowhere.
These
phenomena encompass many of the most fascinating and important events and processes
in science, the arts, nature, the economy, and everyday life. With authority and
wit, this myth-shattering book explains how science is at last shedding light
on some of the most perenially mystifying phenomena. It also offers a groundbreaking
primer in what Casti calls "the science of surprise," a revolutionary
approach to solving a welter of mysteries great and small. John
L. Casti received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Southern California.
He has worked at the RAND Corporation, the University of Arizona, IIASA, New York
University, and Princeton. His previous books include Searching
for Certainty and Paradigms
Lost. He is currently a Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a professor at the Technical University of Vienna.
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