James Gleick - Chaos

I first read James Gleick's Chaos when just after first publication in 1990 or 1991 when I was at college and dreaming of a career in the sciences. Reading it again, thirty or so years later, was to be transported back to a time when science felt shiny and new, the world a problem to be cracked open and unravelled. Life, of course, is more complex and the world is more than a set of equations - which is really what Gleick's book is trying to tell the reader.

Chaos remains an excellent introduction to the subject of complex and non-linear science. One big reason for this is that when Gleick wrote it, the science had only recently broken out of its niche areas into mainstream understanding. The world's coffee tables were groaning under the weight of highly coloured photo books containing images from Mandlebrot Sets and everyone wanted to understand strange attractors. Gleick takes us through the history of the science, how a few lonesome scientists noticed irrational behaviour in their maths. Seemingly simple equations could, depending on circumstance, give widely varying results but when these results were plotted down and graphed, order would appear. 

Reading Chaos today is to get a sense of a new, emergent science, breaking through old barriers between disciplines, turning scientists labours on their heads and making everyone ask difficult questions of themselves. It is no surprise that Gleick places Thomas Kuhn's idea of Scientific Revolution at the heart of his book. It clearly felt like a revolution was taking place. 

Thirty years later I am not so sure. Gleick's emphasis on rapid change perhaps arises out of the close look he was taking at a number of scientists. But really this is a book that emphasises how modern science is so compartmentalised that new insights were difficult to accept and scientists often didn't understand each other. That remains true today. Nonetheless Chaos was a real breakthrough in terms of scientific understanding of the order, and disorder, of the universe. 

Gleick's work is accessible, but he avoids a deep dive into the science. This is fair enough, because it might quickly become incomprehensible otherwise. But it does mean that in places there are elements of handwaving, or a glossing over of detail that left me wanting more. Nonetheless there's enough here to make the reader understanding the generalities. His focus is on the personalities and the processes. Nonetheless the anecdotal material illuminates an era in scientific research when mavericks could make a real difference. It is hard to believe that any university today would tolerate the Dynamical Systems Collective operating unofficially and borrowing equipment as they did at the University of California in the 1970s.

Gleick's approach does make it easier to see how Chaos theory arose out of a particular set of circumstances. It is interesting, for instance, that several of the earliest researchers were individuals who defied the mainstream politically and organisationally. It's hard not to see that the communal living and activity of the Dynamical Systems Collective helped them to defy certain scientific norms. Indeed, the sort of dialectical thinking that helps understand Chaos certainly was there among some scientists. It is also clear that the world of science was changing - new technologies, particularly the computer, allowed Chaos researchers to do the massive number of calculations necessary to generate the eye catching and data rich graphs and pictures that allow us to visualise the science itself. Nonetheless the book is of an age - there are no women scientists mentioned at all, and women only really make an appearance as wives of scientists. Thankfully that has changed at least a little, though we have a long way to go.

This brings me to a final comment. Chaos, the book, was written at a particular point in the science's development and it bears the hallmarks of its era. Some of the line drawings are very poor, though the colour plates stand up well (though a modern PC will now generate them in seconds, not hours). Some of Gleick's remarks are now amusing, as when he muses on computer power. But this is a book that stood up surprisingly well, and reminded me of a time when, for me, science remained this big shiny answer to all the complex questions. Then Gleick helped send me on a personal trajectory. Looking back I am not sure the revolution was quite as significant as is implied here. But science was changed and this book tells the story well.

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