With 102 spectacular full-color photos, this fascinating "field guide" explores the world's natural disorder.

A pioneering book that shows how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis Order Out of Chaos is a sweeping critique of the discordant landscape of modern scientific knowledge. In this landmark book, Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and acclaimed philosopher Isabelle Stengers offer an exciting and accessible account of the philosophical implications of thermodynamics. Prigogine and Stengers bring contradictory philosophies of time and chance into a novel and ambitious synthesis. Since its first publication in France in 1978, this book has sparked debate among physicists, philosophers, literary critics and historians.

Chaos theory deals with the description of motion (in a general sense) which cannot be predicted in the long term although produced by deterministic system, as well exemplified by meteorological phenomena. It directly comes from the Lunar theory — a three-body problem — and the difficulty encountered by astronomers to accurately predict the long-term evolution of the Moon using “Newtonian” mechanics. Henri Poincaré's deep intuitions were at the origin of chaos theory. They also led the meteorologist Edward Lorenz to draw the first chaotic attractor ever published. But the main idea consists of plotting a curve representative of the system evolution rather than finding an analytical solution as commonly done in classical mechanics. Such a novel approach allows the description of population interactions and the solar activity as well. Using the original sources, the book draws on the history of the concepts underlying chaos theory from the 17th century to the last decade, and by various examples, show how general is this theory in a wide range of applications: meteorology, chemistry, populations, astrophysics, biomedicine, etc.

In this age of climate change, killer germs, and obesity, it's easy to feel as if we've fallen out of synch with the global ecosystem. This ecological anxiety has polarized a new generation of Americans: many are drawn to natural solutions and organic lifestyles, while others rally around high-tech development and industrial efficiencies. Johnson argues that both views, when taken to extremes, can be harmful, even deadly. Johnson, raised in the crunchy-granola epicenter of Nevada City, California, lovingly and rigorously scrutinizes his family's all-natural mindset, a quest that brings him into the worlds of an outlaw midwife, radical doctors, renegade farmers and one hermit forester. Along the way, he uncovers paradoxes at the heart of our ecological condition: Why, even as medicine improves, are we becoming less healthy? Why are more American women dying in childbirth? Why do we grow fatter the more we diet? Why have so many attempts to save the environment backfired? In All Natural* - a sparklingly intelligent, wry, and scrupulously reported narrative - Johnson teases fact from faith and offers a rousing and original vision for a middle ground between natural and technological solutions that will assuage frustrated environmentalists, perplexed parents, and confused consumers alike.

Every few years a book changes the way people think about a field. In psychology there is Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. In science, James Gleick's Chaos. In economics and finance, Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street. And in business there is now Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Richard T. Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja. Surfing the Edge of Chaos is a brilliant, powerful, and practical book about the parallels between business and nature -- two fields that feature nonstop battles between the forces of tradition and the forces of transformation. It offers a bold new way of thinking about and responding to the personal and strategic challenges everyone in business faces these days. Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja argue that because every business is a living system (not just as metaphor but in reality), the four cornerstone principles of the life sciences are just as true for organizations as they are for species. These principles are: Equilibrium is death. Innovation usually takes place on the edge of chaos. Self-organization and emergence occur naturally. Organizations can only be disturbed, not directed. Using intriguing, in-depth case studies (Sears Roebuck, Monsanto, Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Army, British Petroleum, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems), Surfing the Edge of Chaos shows that in business, as in nature, there are no permanent winners. There are just companies and species that either react to change and evolve, or get left behind and become extinct. Some examples: Parallels between Yellowstone National Park and Sears show why equilibrium is a dangerous place in both nature and business. How Monsanto used a "strange attractor" to move to the edge of chaos to alter its identity and transform its culture. The unlikely story of how the U.S. Army embraced the ideas of self-organization and emergence. Why the misapplication of linear logic (reengineering a business or attempting to eradicate predators in nature) will inevitably fail. The stories in Surfing the Edge of Chaos are of pioneering efforts that show how the principles of living systems produce bottom-line impact and profound transformational change. What's really striking about them, though, is their reality. They are about success and failure, breakthroughs and dead-ends. In short, they are like the business you are in and the challenges you face.

Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act—naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities. It may not seem like a problem when it comes to paying a premium for organic food. But what about condemnations of “unnatural” sexual activity? The guilt that attends not having a “natural” birth? Economic deregulation justified by the inherent goodness of “natural” markets? In Natural, readers embark on an epic journey, from Peruvian rainforests to the backcountry in Yellowstone Park, from a “natural” bodybuilding competition to a “natural” cancer-curing clinic. The result is an essential new perspective that shatters faith in Nature’s goodness and points to a better alternative. We can love nature without worshipping it, and we can work toward a better world with humility and dialogue rather than taboos and zealotry.

This powerful book provides the first comprehensive overview of the intellectual roots of the worldwide environmental movement - from ancient religions and philosophies to modern science and ethics - and synthesizes them into a new philosophy of nature in which to ground our moral values and social action. It traces the origins and evolution of the dominant worldview that has built our industrial, technocratic, man-centered civilization, and brought us to the current ecological crisis. At the same time, it uncovers an alternative cultural tradition in the world's different religions and philosophies and describes how these ideas are now surfacing and coalescing to form an ecological sensibility and a new vision of nature which recognizes the inter-relatedness of all living things. Finally, this book integrates these varied traditions with modern physics and the science of ecology into a larger philosophical whole that provides the environmental movement with a comprehensive vision of an organic and sustainable society in harmony with nature. As ecological disasters continue to threaten our planet, becoming worse with every passing moment of indifference, it has become clear that we must take action. We must change our relationship with nature, and return to the days when our lives were intimately connected to and dependent upon the natural world. Nature's Web lays the foundations for that change by explaining where our complex ideas about nature come from, why they are wrong, and what we can do to change them.

The study of chaotic systems has become a major scientific pursuit in recent years, shedding light on the apparently random behaviour observed in fields as diverse as climatology and mechanics. InThe Essence of Chaos Edward Lorenz, one of the founding fathers of Chaos and the originator of its seminal concept of the Butterfly Effect, presents his own landscape of our current understanding of the field. Lorenz presents everyday examples of chaotic behaviour, such as the toss of a coin, the pinball's path, the fall of a leaf, and explains in elementary mathematical strms how their essentially chaotic nature can be understood. His principal example involved the construction of a model of a board sliding down a ski slope. Through this model Lorenz illustrates chaotic phenomena and the related concepts of bifurcation and strange attractors. He also provides the context in which chaos can be related to the similarly emergent fields of nonlinearity, complexity and fractals. As an early pioneer of chaos, Lorenz also provides his own story of the human endeavour in developing this new field. He describes his initial encounters with chaos through his study of climate and introduces many of the personalities who contributed early breakthroughs. His seminal paper, "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" is published for the first time.

Why does water always take a winding course in streams and rivers? Do common principles and rhythms underlie its movement - whether it be in the sea, in a plant, or even in the blood of a human being? In this seminal and thought-provoking work, the laws apparent in the subtle patterns of water in movement are shown to be the same as those perceptible in the shaping of bones, muscles and a myriad of other forms in nature. Fully illustrated, Sensitive Chaos reveals the unifying forces that underlie all living things. The author observes and explains such phenomena as the flight of birds, the formation of internal organs such as the heart, eye and ear, as well as mountain ranges and river deltas, weather and space patterns, and even the formation of the human embryo.

Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. In this book Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. Distinguishing "agents" (e.g., molecules, cells, animals, and species) from their interactions (e.g., chemical reactions, immune system responses, sexual reproduction, and evolution), Flake argues that it is the computational properties of interactions that account for much of what we think of as "beautiful" and "interesting." From this basic thesis, Flake explores what he considers to be today's four most interesting computational topics: fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation. Each of the book's parts can be read independently, enabling even the casual reader to understand and work with the basic equations and programs. Yet the parts are bound together by the theme of the computer as a laboratory and a metaphor for understanding the universe. The inspired reader will experiment further with the ideas presented to create fractal landscapes, chaotic systems, artificial life forms, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks.