| The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (Penguin science) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Modern Science 101 - a readable, eye-opening survey course • • • • • (bewertet mit 5 von 5 Punkten) Rezension bezieht sich auf: The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (Penguin Press Science) (Taschenbuch) In their preface, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart describe this book as "a streamlined introduction to the central preoccupations of modern science." The concepts of chaos, complexity, and simplicity are central to the book; they are presented without jargon and with marvelous analogies and examples. Much of the discussion of complexity focuses on life, especially human life and human intelligence. An especially useful concept they introduce is the "brain pun," the human brain's tendency to see similarity (bird wings and bat wings) and infer causality or relationship. This book is remarkable in how much it teaches the intelligent layperson. For example, frog DNA is more complicated than ours because it incorporates so many instructions to the tadpole on how to mature under a wide range of temperature conditions. Human embryos don't need an instruction book with a huge chapter entitled "Coping with Temperature Changes," because we initially grow in the marvelously temperature-controlled environment of the womb. Did you know that? I didn't. Speaking of instruction books - Cohen and Stewart clearly show that the instruction book metaphor for DNA is flawed. Only a fraction of human DNA is meaningful; the rest is "junk." (Same for other species - it's life, not just us.) But junk DNA replicates, too. Also, for most species in the real world, a wide variety of gene patterns produce pretty much the same animal. Did you know any of this? I didn't. This is an ideal book for the intelligent layperson whose taste runs to the "readable but accurate." At 443 pages plus notes in the paperback version, it's plenty long enough for a coast-to-coast flight, with some left over for the next day. Highly recommended; I can't wait to pass it on to friends. Eine Rezension von Ein Kunde vom 15. März 1997 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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