Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos

About this book

From the tiniest particles in quantum physics to the tumbling of celestial bodies – not to mention dripping taps, bouncing billiard balls, the vagaries of the weather and the Stock Exchange – nothing in the universe ever behaves in a way that is totally predictable. As Ian Stewart shows in this stimulating and accessible account, the key to this chaotic world can be found in the concept of chaos, one of the most exciting breakthroughs in recent decades.

Contents

- Chaos from order
- equations for everything
- the laws of error
- the last universalist
- one-way pendulum
- strange attractors
- the weather factory
- recipe for chaos
- sensitive chaos
- fig-trees and feigenvalues
- the texture of reality
- return to Hyperion
- the imbalance of nature
- beyond the butterfly
- Von Neumann's dream
- chaos and quantum
- farewell, deep thought

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Biography

Ian Stewart is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, as well as the Director of its Interdisciplinary Mathematical Research Programme. He is also Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London. He has written or co-authored over sixty books, including The Collapse of Chaos, Fearful Symmetry, and Game, Set and Math (available in Penguin).