Dorian Savage
The Fractal Geometry of Christmas Trees
Nature’s Chaos
By James Gleick & Eliot Porter
Scribner 125pp £14.95
The first thing to say is that this book exists only because the publisher is cashing in on the unexpected success of James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science. This is the coffee table Chaos aimed at the Christmas market. Expect any day the appearance of Stephen Hawking’s Big Bang Microwave Cookbook. The second thing to say is that Nature’s Chaos is a total delight which deserves to be in at least five-million Christmas stockings.
The evangelists – I use the word advisedly – of chaos theory claim that it is the third great revolution in the physical sciences in the twentieth century, as significant as relativity and quantum mechanics. They may well be proved right. Chaos offers startling new ways of understanding life, the universe and everything, but it is also a remarkably accessible science, immediately visible in the everyday world.
While the physicists are examining mesons and muons careering about at ever greater speeds in ever vaster particle accelerators, the chaoticians are getting excited about turbulence in a spiral of cigarette smoke, dripping taps, and the weather. Anything, in fact, which is seemingly chaotic, and has thus been dismissed by
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk