8.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Publication date 1994 ISBN 978-0-670-84983-3 Originally published 1994 Page count 495 Genres Mathematics, Science | 4.1/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 495 OCLC 247326335 Publisher Penguin Books | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subjects Models of scientific inquiry, Complex systems Similar Jack Cohen books, Chaos theory books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (1994) is a book about complexity theory and the nature of scientific explanation written by biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart.
Overview
In this book Cohen and Stewart give their ideas on chaos theory, particularly on how the simple leads to the complex, and conversely, how the complex leads to the simple, and argue for a need for contextual explanation in science as a complement to reduction. This book dovetails with other books written by the Cohen-Stewart team, particularly Figments of Reality.
As with other Cohen-Stewart books, topics are illustrated with humorous science fiction snippets dealing with a fictional alien intelligence, the Zarathustrians, whom Cohen and Stewart use as metaphors of the human mind itself.