Chance and Chaos

Via this book, David Ruelle provides an expertly-guided intellectual tour of a constellation of ideas including determinism, probability, chaos, turbulence, complexity, Godel's theorems, information, entropy, irreversibility, ergodicity, quantum mechanics, history, economics, game theory, genetics, and intelligence. He explains with elegant clarity and doesn't use much math, but his approach is fairly sophisticated, so some prior familiarity with these ideas would be helpful.He doesn't neglect the basics, but his greatest value-added is in the way he interconnects these ideas. He also offers opinions and speculations which are worth pondering, even if you don't wind up agreeing with him. When you finish the book, you realize that it isn't framed around a central thesis and he doesn't offer simple conclusions, but that's to be expected with any skillful tour of a wondrously complex and mysterious place.I very highly recommend this uniquely valuable book to anyone interested in this range of subject matter. Also, readers who like the books of Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets  and  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable ) are likely to enjoy this book as well (and vice versa), on the basis of similarities in content and especially style.

Great condition

Difficult subject fun to read

This is the best popular book on chaos, dynamic systems, and entropy that I have ever read, by one of the pioneers of this field. I have remarked in my reviews of Gribbin, Kaku, and others that Creative Geniuses in science (unlike Ingenious Followers who are so abundant) inspire others and themselves often by popularizing science in ordinary English. It is a good sign if they do this often, but sometimes they only do it seldom or never. Ruelle, as far as I know, only did it once, in this book, and the reader who loses the opportunity to obtain this book has lost a classic. Ruelle inspired me at an important place in my career (my fields are related to the probability-logic-entropy-physics interface). I am especially fond of recalling his description of how extremely new creations or inventions are typically received in science: journal reviewers will usually contradict each other in their haste to oust the newcomer. There are still journals which do not touch chaos, entropy, dynamic systems, fractals, not to mention my own field of logic-based probability.

This was an odd book from my perspective. It's a bit old now and after reflecting on the experience of reading it, I have figured out what it's purpose was. Books like this are basically what people who like to randomly browse Wikipedia read before there was Wikipedia. It wasn't really a serious treatment of "Chance" or "Chaos". There were quite a huge number of topics for such a small book. He covers game theory, turbulence, economics, history, genetics, quantum mechanics, Goedel's Theorem, entropy, algorithmic complexity, and on and on. Reminds me a bit of Asimov. How successful was he at actually delivering the right dose of this kind of collection of topics? Well, I frequently felt I was at the wrong level, either by knowing too much or too little. But regardless of what one gets from this, it's helpful to know that it is really a very diverse book and not tightly focused on "Chance and Chaos". That title more accurately describes the process the author used to select material to write about.

Interesting book but it tries to cover too much material some of which cannot be adequately grasped without the maths (though some of the explanatory notes help). It also ends with some worn out admonitions about the future of humanity and such stuff which plagues science popularization books.

Ruelle is the mathematician who invented some of the concepts he describes in this book so this gives the laymen the chance to gain otherwise distant knowledge. His explanations are clear and witty making for a delightful read.