The Collapse of Chaos

The Collapse of Chaos
	Softcover edition
Author	Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Subject	scientific explanation, complexity theory
Publisher	Penguin Books
Publication date	1994
Pages	495
ISBN	978-0-670-84983-3
OCLC	247326335

The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (1994) is a book about complexity theory and the nature of scientific explanation written by biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart.

In this book Cohen and Stewart give their ideas on chaos theory, particularly on how the simple leads to the complex, and conversely, how the complex leads to the simple, and argue for a need for contextual explanation in science as a complement to reduction. This book dovetails with other books written by the Cohen-Stewart team, particularly Figments of Reality.

As with other Cohen-Stewart books, topics are illustrated with humorous science fiction snippets dealing with a fictional alien intelligence, the Zarathustrians, whom Cohen and Stewart use as metaphors of the human mind itself.

Reception

Next Generation commented, "Although the book assumes you have zero knowledge of science (and thus is a little patronizing in the early chapters), it presents the concepts of Complexity Theory as well as anything we've seen."[1]

Additional reviews

Casti, John L. (21 July 1994). "Why is anything ever simple?" (PDF). Nature. 370 (6486): 189. Bibcode:1994Natur.370..189C. doi:10.1038/370189a0.
Regis, Ed (12 June 1994). "The World Made Easy". The New York Times.
THE COLLAPSE OF CHAOS by Jack Cohen , Ian Stewart | Kirkus Reviews.
"Nonfiction Book Review: The Collapse of Chaos: 2discovering Simplicity in a Complex World by Jack Cohen, Author, Ian Stewart, With Viking Books $23.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-670-84983-3". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-11-06.
Tait, Stephanie (2010). "A review of "The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World," by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 1995". Complicity. 7 (2). doi:10.29173/cmplct8955.

gollark: Approval voting (basically just what we have now but you can vote for multiple people) is among the less bad ways to vote.

gollark: Maybe? There are other countries with her as head of state.

gollark: I would complain about our first-past-the-post and generally awful electoral system encouraging this sort of thing, but there are lots of voting systems and there are some theorems meaning that they *can't* work very well. A less awful system could exist, though, I guess.

gollark: Technically, the Queen has many powers. In practice she can't use them, but...

gollark: No.

References

"Essential Reading". Next Generation. No. 23. Imagine Media. November 1996. p. 59.

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart: The Collapse of Chaos: discovering simplicity in a complex world, Penguin Books, 1994, ISBN 978-0-14-029125-4

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[1] "Essential Reading". Next Generation. No. 23. Imagine Media. November 1996. p. 59.