Chaos: Making A New Science is the best-selling book by James Gleick that first introduced the principles and early development of chaos theory to the public. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and was shortlisted for the Science Book Prize in 1989.
The first popular book about chaos theory, it describes the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, and Lorenz attractors without resorting to complex mathematics. It portrays the efforts of dozens of scientists whose separate work contributed to the developing field. It remains in print and is used as an introduction to the topic for the mathematical layman. An enhanced ebook edition was released by Open Road Media in 2011 adding embedded video and hyperlinked notes.
Famous quotes containing the words making and/or science:
“Where is he who seeing a thousand men useless and unhappy, and making the whole region forlorn by their inaction, and conscious himself of possessing the faculty they want, does not hear his call to go and be their king?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)