Obtain Sync: The Emerging Science Of Spontaneous Order Expressed By Steven H. Strogatz Issued As Version

enjoyed this book every bit as much as Gleick's book on chaos, Strogatz is an excellent writer, Able to convey complex concepts of chaos and synchronicity to the general reader, this book is for anyone with interest in the topic.
If you don't fully understand chaos from one perspective, don't worry, Storgatz provides many.

With discussions of his own work as well as the work of mentors, students, and others in the field, Strogatz addressed the broad application of sync in the world and universe.
Skilled at capturing the various personalities of people he has worked with, Strogatz also included interesting stories about many researchers in the field as well as interesting stories about the inner workings of academia.
With examples from biology ie, neurons, heartbeat, and sleep/circadian rhythm, to physics and engineering ie, metronomes, super conductors, power grids, and the bridge in London, to social connectedness ie,degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon/small world model, and the future of sync studies consciousness, evolution, immune system, the universe as a computer, and more, there are many fun things to learn about.
I was also happy to learn about the lesser known role of Stanley Milgram in uncovering thedegrees of separation principle,

Who knew what the study of fireflies would bring Excellent book, Loved the author's easy to understand journeying through different aspects of sync from fireflies to Josephson junctions,

Amidst all of the science, there was a brilliant touch of gripping memoirs and an excellent way to tell a story.
Strogatz uses great analogies to help regular readers understand the mathematical processes behind as chaos theory, complexity theory, as well as the beautiful way that sync underlies these phenomena in unexpected ways.
However his most intriguing chapter is at the end, when he briefly talks about neural synchrony and postulates on the relationship between sync and human consciousness.
As this book was writtenyears ago now, it leaves out many recent developments in sync, I wish there was an update to this book with Strogatzs thoughts on current research on neural sync and brainaspredictor models of human behavior.
All in all, this is a great book to read as a comprehensive and thoughtful introduction to the applications, history, and development of sync models across disciplines.
I found this book fairly fascinating, Strogatz has been in applied mathematics for decades, with special interest in quantum physics and biology, The former I skipped many chapters on they were incredibly abstract and hard to understand, and it's not something I have a special interest in, but the latter was fascinating.
The chapters are about how fireflies sync, crickets sync their chirping, the heart's pacemaker syncs all the cells, and many other biological processes that sync with little information passing between the individual actors.
While this is the name of the book, the book is largely an autobiography on a scientific journey spanning many decades, Strogatz describes to us the process of writing a paper, the frustrating lows, and the powerful sparks that strike at unlikely moments, in conversations with coworkers, or at home.
One of the most influential papers Strogatz has cowritten, is that of smallworld networks, This relates to sync, and essentially it describes the power of graphs that are highly clustered with a couple of random connections to other tight clusters.
For example, you are tightly connected to your friends, and their friends, That's a tight cluster. But that random person you met in Thailandyears ago and still keep in touch with is a random bridge to another tight cluster.
This is what causes us to only be few links away from most people, When Strogatz was thinking about this problem, he realized how common these "smallworld networks" were everywhere in biology, and how effective they are at getting tasks done.


In general, I walk away withbig insights:how academic work gets done,the fascinating process of sync between many small entities, andsmallworld networks, and the vocabulary about "density" and the power of just a few random bridges.
While I enjoyed the book overall, I ended up skimming and skipping a fair bit of things that I just didn't find particularly interesting.
I read this book on the advice of an old friend who studies neuroscience, I have occasion to deal with synchronization problems in my own life, so I thought it would be fun to read about the science of it.
And it was!

If you've ever wondered about why your sleep patterns are they way they are, or why when you try to go to bed early you end up with terrible insomnia, or how fireflies all flash at the same time or thedegrees of Kevin Bacon, this is the book for you.
It's the kind of book with surprising enough stuff to tell your spouse or lunch friends about as I did, The information is presented pretty clearly, with decent metaphors to deal with the inexpressible at least w/o mathematics, Chaos lovers will find a lot of discussion about nonlinear dynamics, as Strogatz is a leader in that field, It helps to have some basic exposure to modern physics topics in places,

My '' rating is really for the information in the book, The writing is pretty good for a Math professor, but there are places where it gets a little awkward, probably would give it a '' I've read enough "popular" science books to no longer get all excited with stories about the "search" for something.
Sentences that begin "I then called my buddy, soandso at Harvard, We spent summers together blah blah blah, . . " are not my favorite. But there's not much of that here, Allinall a pretty fun read, Steve Strogatz has gained popularity with his textbook, "Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos", I would say that his nonacademic work, "Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order" is an equally smashing hit, "Sync" explores the idea of how spontaneous synchronization arises in the chaotic turbulent lives/nonlives of diverse entities, Why do fireflies synchronize their flashing in the dark or how do crickets chirp in unison Why do we wake up at almost our usual time, even after an allnighter Why do certain fads gain popularity in the market, while some die down quickly Why did the Millennium Bridge start shaking when an unruly group of people stampeded it on inauguration day These are some of

the questions that Steve Strogatz addresses in this book.


I was really impressed with this book on so many fronts, As a computational science enthusiast, this book was a special treat for me, Strogatz fills the chapters with narratives where computers are used extensively for modeling various phenomena coupled biological oscillators, Josephson junctions, sync across social networks, chaotic synchronizers.
The idea of a computer model seems almost banal by now, but Strogatz's experiments go way back when they were not so common.
Strogatz's narration style is very gripping, and he generates sufficient suspense through his various experiments before giving the reader the thrill of successful result outcomes.


The applications covered in the book are diverse synchronous flashing of fireflies, the alpha rhythm of the brain, the circadian body clock, planetary and quantum sync, communication security, sync across the human network, to name a few.
Since the applications and underlying mathematics is diverse, Strogatz handles the basics of each topic before he connects it to a sync problem.
The descriptions are pretty layman, even to the point that not a single equation is provided in the book, My only complaint is that the book lacks pictures sometimes where they are necessary, At some points, I felt a diagram would have relieved the burden of description both on the writer and the reader,

Strogatz hopes in the epilogue of his book that he's given the reader a sense about how thrilling it is to be a scientist.
I think he has. For starters, this book straddles across the boundaries of so many "fields", giving it a heavily interdisciplinary focus, For a problem in any application, Strogatz recounts many problems in other fields that exhibit the same behavior, He then shows how mathematics serves as the means to describe such problems, allowing scientists to then feed these problems to computing engines for visualization and assist them in discovering new theoretical avenues.
Essentially, Strogatz demonstrates how scientists often need to see the unity in disparate problems of diverse fields, to express them in a common language, and crossapply concepts to get solutions.
Secondly, he focuses for a significant part on his own experiments and collaborations in the area of sync, He gets the advantage to narrate the story of his simulation crusades, impressing on the reader the enjoyment to be gained through pushing unexplored waters.
And lastly, through the fun, he stresses the importance of scientific bravery where no fruitful applications are in sight, He's scattered sufficient examples through the narration where seemingly fun experiments for the sake of curiosity lead to crucial applications for mankind, .