Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

There are three types of science books. First are monographs, written by scientists for their peers, larded with jargon, and incomprehensible to the general public. Second are books by professional science writers, which read like Tuesday's New York Times - glib and flashy but unreliable because the authors depend on interviews of a necessarily small number of scientists. Finally are those few books by scientists who both know the subject and are able to write. Scientifically reliable and well written, Steven Strogatz's "Synch: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life" is in the last category. Inspired by and dedicated to the late Art Winfree - a biologist who had more intuition than most mathematicians - Strogatz gets the excitement of discovering a new field and of learning to do research down onto the page. In three well-constructed sections, comprising three or four chapters each, the author leads his readers on a grand tour of his research in nonlinear science over the past two decades, from observations of Indonesian fireflies flashing in time with each other, through brain waves, circadian rhythms, coupled pendula, and quantum condensation (lasers, superconductors, and superfluids), to synchronized chaos and the internet. Throughout, helpful metaphors abound and mathematical equations are avoided, while many important ideas are skillfully introduced and the human side of doing science is artfully described. One factual error should be noted. In chapter seven, it is stated that in 1979 Edward Lorenz introduced the term "butterfly effect" to underscore the sensitive dependence on initial conditions of chaotic systems, whereas the true year was 1972. This error continues to propagate because science writer James Gleick made it in his popular book entitled "Chaos". It's important to get the year right because the 1970s were an amazing decade in which research in nonlinear science exploded from less than a dozen papers a year to more than a dozen a day. Rather than merely commenting on this historic explosion, Lorenz helped to ignite it. Alwyn Scott http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/

I have been reading popular science books on self-organization and complexity for the past 7 years and I thought that I had quite broad and deep perspective on the field. Dr. Strogatz's book surprised me with its different, yet very simple and profound look at the nature of self-organization and complexity.At the heart of this book is the idea that order emerges out of chaos by means synchronization. The author takes us on personal, emotional journey through his years as a scientist, and illustrates phenomenon of syncrhonization in the context of biological, chemical, mechanical, quantum mechanical and social-economical systems.

"Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order" is a dissertation on synchronization and its place in the universe. Standard entropy theory has always indicated that a system that is orderly will, over time, move to a position of less and less organization. However, that is not always consistent with observations in real life. Steven Strogatz does an inspired job of describing how synchronization exists in such small areas as fireflies and plant leaves to much larger concepts of the universe and the asteroid belt in our solar system. One of the more fascinating sections of the book deals with synchronization in human beings. It covers current research in areas such as sleep rhythms, circadian rhythms, the tendency for women to match menstrual cycles over time, body temperature rhythms, and various other normal cycles of the human experience. This is a very academically oriented text that many with only a passing interest in such things might find too detailed and scientific for their likes. On the other hand, for those with a keen interest in the cycles of the natural world and current research into this emerging field this is one of the foremost texts on the subject. It is a highly recommended read for anyone with a desire to learn about how natural tendencies toward synchronization move us to spontaneous order.

Review of Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, by Steven StrogatzReviewer: Mark Lamendola, IEEE Senior Member and author of over 3500 articles.Two thumbs up! This entertaining and informative book is one of the few I would read twice. You know those lists of books you'd want to have if you were stranded on a desert island? Sync made my list.While Sync is fact-filled, it's far from dry. Throughout the text, Strogatz made me laugh out loud-reminding me very much of the engaging, "can't put it down" writing style used by Bill Bryson (author of Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail and The Lost Continent).Strogatz takes a complex topic, and explains it in a way that even folks with no innate interest in the topic will find enjoyable. I learned quite a bit about how and why everything from atoms to planets will suddenly act in unison-or not do so. My newly-gained understanding of the relationship between sleep cycles and body temperature cycles has already helped me make some positive changes. Then there's the explanation of traffic....Not once did Strogatz use an intimidating equation-or any equation at all. Instead, he treats the reader to rich metaphors, analogies, and examples. And instead of dry history on how sync got where it is today, Strogatz shares the frustrations, peculiarities, and human drama of the people behind the developments. Strogatz keeps a pace that is more in line with a Tom Clancy novel than a book focused on a science topic.The ending made me go back to the beginning-to the dedication, actually. I never cared about dedications, before. However this one really meant something to me after I read Sync. Strogatz dedicated Sync to his departed friend Art Winfree, without whom Strogatz would never have taken his fabulous journey and without whom such a marvelous book would not have been possible.