Deep Simplicity

Nov 14, 2024 6:14 AM

Author:John Gribbin

Deep Simplicity

Simplifying chaos and complexity theory for the perplexed, John Gribbin's Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life brilliantly illuminates the harmony underlying our existence.

The world around us can be a complex, confusing place. Earthquakes happen without warning, stock markets fluctuate, weather forecasters seldom seem to get it right - even other people continue to baffle us. How do we make sense of it all?

In fact, John Gribbin reveals, our seemingly random universe is actually built on simple laws of cause and effect that can explain why, for example, just one vehicle braking can cause a traffic jam; why wild storms result from a slight atmospheric change; even how we evolved from the most basic materials. Like a zen painting, a fractal image or the pattern on a butterfly's wings, simple elements form the bedrock of a sophisticated whole.

'The master of popular science writing'

  Sunday Times

'What makes Deep Simplicity different from other books on complexity theory is that Gribbin ... goes back to the fundamentals'

  Daily Telegraph

'One is left feeling even more - if this is possible - filled with admiration for science and delight at the world it investigates'

  Financial Times

John Gribbin is one of today's greatest writers of popular science and the author of bestselling books, including In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Stardust, Science: A History and In Search of the Multiverse. Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and is currently Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.

Reviews

Dr Louann Brizendine's lucid, lively, and always fascinating discussion of how the male brain works (and why) has enlightened me in more ways than I can count.

—— Jane Fonda, actress and writer

Dr Louann Brizendine brings the latest in state-of-the-art science in helping us to understand the most ancient and primal of male passions and desires ... Highly recommended.

—— Dr Dean Ornish, author of The Spectrum and Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCLA.

The book uses the latest research to follow the male brain from infanthood to old age, with fascinating results.

—— Daily Telegraph

A fascinating read... you will pick up some valuable tips to help you understand, appreciate and connect with the men in your life.

—— Helen Fisher, author of Why Him? Why Her?

'It deserves to sell as many copies as there are protons in the full stop that ends this review (at least 500,000,000,000).'

—— Craig Brown , Mail on Sunday

'The very book I have been looking for most of my life...Trunkloads of information, amazing stories and extraordinary personalities'

—— Christopher Matthew , Daily Mail

'The amount of ground covered is truly impressive...it's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science'

—— John Waller , Guardian

As he delights in each new discovery, so do we

—— Metro Scotland

A brave and compelling book

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

A delightful read that will stimulate the scientist inside everyone

—— Bluesci

This slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre

—— Independent

Through this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life

—— Ian Critchley , Daily Telegraph

Gabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction

—— The Lady, Susan Hill

Glinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise

—— Victoria Segal , The Guardian

A curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy

—— Elizabeth Day , Observer

A valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth

—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday Times

This book is mesmerising

—— William Leith , Scotsman

Her description of the struggle to remain individual and hence moral is her real achievement. This, to me, is what female writing has to do, and she does it with style and humour and beauty

—— Rachel Cusk

Richard Dawkin's new book... gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts

—— Daily Telegraph

The book is full of evidence, some familiar and some new. Its case is presented in a manner succinct, clear and sometimes vivid

—— Daily Telegraph

No other book currently available approaches Dawkin's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion

—— National Center for Science Education

The Greatest Show on Earth is a lucid, thorough and often exciting survey of evolution and takes in rats' teeth, dogs, bacteria, the so-called missing link, crustaceans, giraffe anatomy, hummingbirds, chimpanzees, enzymes - you name it. It is informed in nearly every paragraph by Mr. Dawkins's irrepressible enthusiasm

—— Sarah Lyall , New York Times

The Greatest Show on Earth... is essential reading. I would currently rate it... as the best overall book on the evidence for Evolution

—— Marc E. Miquel , SCOPE

This is a magnificent book of wonderstanding: Richard Dawkins combines an artist's wonder at the virtuosity of nature with a scientist's understanding of how it comes to be

—— Matt Ridley, author of "Nature via Nurture"

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