Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity

I'm no scientist. Nor an academic. And it's been about twenty years since any formal full-time education. I found this book after rifling through ten or so boxes of assorted second-hand books up for grabs in a community centre on the Isles of Scilly. Something about the cover appealed to me. Maybe because I'm an artist/creative. Perhaps because I recognised the Hokusai reference and liked the clarity of the art-work. Certainly I'd read and loved James Gleick's classic book on chaos in the Nineties. And the words 'deep simplicity' resonated in my bones. Especially to a man forever in search of simpler ways of existing, to a man drawn instinctively to Zen. Whatever my reasons for picking up this book, I came to love it. I read a fair amount. Every book has its pace, some quicker, some slower, some turgid, some dense, some with big spaces between paragraphs, and some with type so small it leaves your eyeballs raw. I had a very slow entry into this book, one of those 'I've read this page twenty times and it's still not quite getting in there' scenarios. One of those occasions where you wake yourself up with a 'huh?' as your head nods to the side, you try re-reading the same sentence to once again find yourself five minutes later staring blankly at a book with a crick in your neck and a numb buttock. That may have had to do with my inability to focus my mind on the job in hand at the time, or perhaps that I was sizing it up as to whether to bother reading it at all. Was it just too geeky? I hadn't paid for it, so didn't feel that there was any reason to suck my money's worth of juice from it. Perhaps I was just plain tired and needed sleep more than information at that moment in my life. But I persevered. Initially I felt back in a classroom. Out of my depth. Wrestling with concepts, that although expressed with a beautiful clarity, wallowed in the murky depths just out of reach of my present level of understanding. Like a deep sea diver I only saw glimpses of those things that my sphere of illumination touched. And they were strange. Although also familiar: 'strangely familiar'. I needed time to absorb the paragraphs, to 'update my operating system'. Just a few pages and I'd have to stop, put the book down, digest for a few hours/days, allow my brain to chew over the content. But not for too long. If I did, the thread would go cold and I'd have forgotten what went on before. And so started a dance between myself and this book. It grew on me. Fast. And illuminated so many diverse corners of existence that I was left reeling with the implications. Giddy. It's a must read. An enormous read. Should be compulsory reading for every human. The highest wisdom that we now know, the cutting edge of contemporary science/physics/thought written in simple terms for a lay person like me to understand. With stacks of fascinating references to contemporary life and culture, examples being illustrated with traf

I appreciate greatly the author's aim, sharing his sense of wonder with his readers. Gribbin gives a wide perspective about chaos and complexity with facts from the history of science. Simple laws, non-linearity, sensitivity to initial conditions and feedback give rise to chaos and complexity. Gribbin tries to reveal the facts of our universe with these concepts. Also the author gives some good examples for accessing the subject with ease. Power law pattern and gaia concepts are also analyzed in the book for understanding life. I derived much benefit from this book.

I have just finished reading Deep Simplicity and felt the urge to tell anyone who would listen how I felt about the book. Read the other reviewers to find out what the book is about. There have been very few occasions and very few books that moved me in the way that Deep Simplicity did, for it is a work of art and without doubt a genuinely beautiful piece of literature. What's more, I feel that the beauty inherent in the book is self-similar on many scales, from the lucidly illustrative metaphors, to paragraphs that grab you as they weave delicately expounded threads together, to the overall structure and flow of the book itself. I felt privileged to have read the book. After I finished I was left with a tremendous sense of appreciation for and recognition with our planet, its biosphere, life, and the Universe at large; even for my fellow man - although our depredations are made strikingly apparent. My final and lasting feeling is one of profound enlightenment; something felt when previously reading Gribbin, but not to this extent. Thank You John Gribbin, for writing this book; $24.95 in one currency, priceless in another.

+++++ This book, by astrophysicist John Gribbin, gives us insight into the concepts of "chaos" and "complexity." Chaos occurs when a small change in the starting conditions of a process produces a big change in the outcome of that process. A complex system is one that is chaotic, and in which the way the system develops feeds back on itself to change the way it is developing. Is there an order or a simplicity that underlies chaos and complexity? According to Gribbin, there is. He states, "the great insight is that chaos and complexity follow simple laws-essentially the same simple laws discovered by Isaac Newton more than three hundred years ago." Gribbin goes on to make this startling statement: "Chaos begets complexity, and complexity begets life." So what is the theme of this book? Answer: "It is the simplicity that underpins complexity, and thereby makes life possible, that is the theme of this book." The first three chapters tell us about Chaos. They are titled as follows: (1) Order (or simplicity) out of chaos (2) The return of chaos (3) Chaos out of order The next chapter introduces another important concept. It's titled: (4) From chaos to complexity The next two chapters introduce and discuss the most complex system of all. They're entitled: (5) Earthquakes, (mass) extinctions, and emergence (of life) (6) The facts of life The final chapter looks into the biggest question facing science today: "Is there life beyond Earth, elsewhere in our Solar System, or out in the Universe at large?" The title of this chapter is: (7) Life beyond Throughout the book, Gribbin reveals how these revolutionary theories of chaos and complexity have been applied over the last two decades to explain all sorts of different, seemingly unrelated phenomena: from traffic jams and the stock market to weather patterns, the formation of galaxies, and the evolution of life. To make the book even more readable and interesting, all these ideas are put in their proper historical context. There are over 35 illustrations (in the form of graphs, diagrams, etc.) that I found were helpful in visually describing key concepts. There is also a short but invaluable glossary that I found to be very beneficial. In fact, it is from here that I obtained the above definitions of chaos and complexity. Who is this book written for? I would say anybody interested in chaos and complexity. However, because Gribbin includes a wide range of scientific disciplines-from biology to physics and computing, meteorology to cosmology-I would recommend having a general scientific background. As well, knowledge of basic mathematics would help. Finally, the only problem I had with this book is that each chapter is written as one, long narrative with no breaks. I feel that it would have been beneficial to have each chapter divided into subsections to ease reading. In conclusion, this is a well-written book on what can be a difficult subject. If you want to learn the p

I really enjoyed this approachable but thorough treatment of chaotic systems and biology. Gribbin cites many interesting studies, including one I loved--about the pigeon competition and the non-optimality of the competitive attractor. This book challenged some of my views, reinforced a lot, and generally led me pleasantly toward an understanding of life. The thermodynamics lessons were a boon, better than I've had it taught in school.