'Chaos' - James Gleick

One of the things which most struck me about James Gleick’s book Chaos was its age. In part, writing conventions have changed over the two decades since it was written. More significantly, though, I wondered why I knew so little about the exciting new science he discusses. Why hadn’t I been taught about fractal dimensions, universality and chaotic bifurcations? They were so interesting to read about, and so very useful – essential, in fact – to science.

In due course, I realised that it was just as well my high school teachers hadn’t tried to introduce me to chaos theory. I was still trying to figure out how a battery worked: the mathematical properties of the electrical oscillations it might produce were (and still are) years of study beyond me. This exciting new science is not a science that can be used by the everyday man or woman on the street.

What Gleick achieves in Chaos is to make it a science that I could almost understand and definitely appreciate. He exposes the mathematical structure and elegance behind measles epidemics and hurricanes; he points out the scientific background of beautiful fractals.

By the end of the book, I was half-convinced that I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Not only would I get to understand chaos theory properly, but I would lead the interesting life of one of the book’s characters. Practically, of course, we can’t all discover new sciences and Gleick only includes the most interesting academic episodes in his book. Nonetheless, those characters do very much make the book.

Gleick may be writing about chaos, but he does it through stories of people: an awful lot of people, but real and interesting people. When the interactions became very complex, I wished that Chaos, like my copy of The Silmarillion, came with an index of characters. I was losing track of who each of the dozens of scientists were. As a story, the book would be easier to understand with fewer characters; what the broad cast certainly does achieve is to point out that the application of chaotic studies is equally broad.

Chaos is not light or easy reading, but neither is it dull. It takes the reader behind the scenes of the oxymoronic simple complexity of our world. It’s a heavy drop of water to help fill the bucket of insatiable curiosity.