Chaos making a new science
The author describes how scientists studying the growth of complexity in nature are discovering order and pattern in chaos. He explains concepts such as nonlinearity, the Butterfly Effect, universal constants, fractals, and strange attractors, and examines the work of scientists such as Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, Edward Lorenz, and Benoit Mandelbrot.
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- You've stumbled upon Chaos Theory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory), which aims to study chaotic systems (charactesised by very high relation to initial variables - see weather prediction, double pendulum, etc).
Some problems are too sensible to initial variables and solutions are not prescriptive like regular physics - meaning that variability at the 20th decimal in your initial variables will induce massive output differences. Lorentz discovery of this is interesting as he was working on weather modelling, it's a clear example of the issues with chaotic systems. He was running simulations of weather systems with multiple fixed initial variables (temperature, wind speed, etc) and seeing how the system progressed over a few hours. He realised that after a typo on a very far away decimal on a single parameter, the system was modelling the complete opposite of what we had seen in the previous test (think it was forecasting a typhoon when it used to say sunny day), even while using values that would be "equal" with relation to the precision of the measuring equipement. And that's nothing to talk about getting clean, precise enough data for such models, which is practically impossible (see the observer effect, between other causes). Garbage in, garbage out.
All this to say that problems in this sphere are characterized by quickly becoming untractable and impossible to model precisely how they evolve over time.
I can recommend James Gleick's Chaos: Making a new science for a overview for the layperson.
- Yep, you're getting it. That same universal principle where the interesting things all happen in that boundary between boring and random (ie. trivially-predictable, and not-predictable-under-any-conditions).
If you haven't already, I heartily recommend James Gleick's book "Chaos" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos:_Making_a_New_Science) which is, to me, the introduction to both self similarity and sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
- This has been a topic of interest for me for almost a decade so far.
See also: non-linear dynamics, dynamical systems
The study of Complexity in the US Sciences is fairly recent, with the notable kickoff of the Santa Fe Institute [1]. They have all the resources there, from classes to scientific conferences.
A few book recommendations I've picked up over the years:
- Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos [2] (recommended for a gentle introduction with history)
- Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science [3]
- Holland, Emergence: From Chaos To Order [4]
- Holland, Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems [5]
- Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity [6] (unread but part of the series)
- Miller, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life [7]
- Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering [11] (edit: forgot i had this on my desk)
Also a shoutout to Stephen Wolfram, reading one of his articles [8] about underlying structures while stuck at an airport proved to be a pivotal moment in my life.
- Wolfram's New Kind of Science, as an exploration of simple rules computed to the point of complex behavior. [9]
- Wolfram's Physics Project, a later iteration on NKS ideas with some significant and thorough publication of work. [10]
Links:
[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226476553
[3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143113453
[4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738201421
[5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262525933
[6] https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Order-Adaptation-Builds-Comple...
[7] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691127026
[8] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetim...
[9] https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/
[10] https://wolframphysics.org/
[11] https://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications...
- James Gleick's "Chaos: Making a new science" will answer your questions and is a fun read!
- Many more beyond this but these are my for sures.
People / Soft Skills:
* How to win friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
* Secrets of Consulting - Gerald Weinberg
* Peopleware - Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
* Nurtured by Love - Shinici Suzuki
* Turn the Ship Around! - David Marquet
* Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss
http://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/
http://dhemery.com/articles/managing_yourself_through_change...
Macro Skills:
* Toyota Production System - Taiichii Ohno
* Workplace Management - Taiichii Ohno
* Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows
* Fifth Discipline - Peter Senge
Agile:
* Extreme Programming, Explained (2nd ed.) - Kent Beck (the annotated bibliography is a goldmine)
* Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick
Programming:
* Implementation Patterns - Kent Beck
* Test-Driven Development, By Example - Kent Beck
* Refactoring (both editions) - Martin Fowler
* Refactoring to Patterns - Joshua Kerievsky
* Practical Object Oriented Design - Sandi Metz
* Functional Programming in Scala - Chiusano & Bjarnason
* Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided By Tests - Freeman & Pryce ("The Goose Book")
* Modern Java in Action - Raoul-Gabriel Urma
* Java Concurrency in Practice - Brian Goetz
* Grokking Algorithms - Aditya Y. Bhargava
Architecture:
* Righting Software - Juval Lowy
* Release It! - Michael Nygard
* Site Reliability Engineering - Beyer, et al. ("The SRE Book”)
* Domain Driven Design - Eric Evans
* Introduction to Permaculture - Bill Mollison and Mia Slay
* Fun with a Pencil - Andrew Loomis
Design:
* All books by Edward Tufte, especially “The visual display of quantitative information”
* The Elements of Typographic Style - Robert Bringhurst
* Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud
* Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
* Notes on the Synthesis of Form - Christopher Alexander
* The Timeless Way of Building - Christopher Alexander
- I was unable to finish "Tipping Point" as it was, in my view, a failed kindergarten-level attempt to explain Chaos, which was done so superbly in 'Chaos: Making a New Science' by James Gleick.
That plus his howler about "Igon Value."
A good storyteller, yes, but that is the limit.
