Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
- Book Review,
by Steven Strogatz
From Publishers Weekly
Strogatz is a Cornell mathematician and pioneer of the science of synchrony, which brings mathematics, physics and biology to bear on the mystery of how spontaneous order occurs at every level of the cosmos, from the nucleus on up. In this eminently accessible and entertaining book, Strogatz explores the mysterious synchrony achieved by fireflies that flash in unison by the thousands, and the question of what makes our own body clocks synchronize with night and day and even with one another. He explores the sync of inanimate objects, inadvertently discovered by Christiaan Huygens in 1665 when he observed that his two pendulum clocks would swing in unison when they were within a certain distance of each other. A case of spontaneous synchrony occurred on the 2000 opening of the Millennium footbridge in London when hundreds of pedestrians caused the bridge to undulate erratically as they unconsciously adjusted their pace to the bridge's swaying-it was closed two days later. Strogatz explores synchrony in chaos systems, at the quantum level, in small-world networks as exemplified by the parlor game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" and in human behavior involving fads, mobs and the herd mentality of stock traders. The author traces how the isolated and often accidental discoveries of researchers are beginning to gel into the science of synchrony, and he amply illustrates how the laws of mathematics underlie the universe's uncanny capacity for spontaneous order.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The nonlinear dynamics of complex systems has been a most hip career field in recent decades. Publishers like to tap its professional popularity for a general audience--James Glieck's Chaos (1987) precipitated a trend leading up to such recent offerings as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked (2002). Strogatz nods to both predecessors in his tour of synchrony, which simply means ordered behavior through time, for example, the beat of a heart. Living things' exhibition of synchrony called forth the field of mathematical biology, whose principal figures and ideas occupy the first part of Strogatz's book; the second part delves into synchronic behavior of inanimate matter, such as superconductivity. Writing accessibly for the nonmathematical, Strogatz explains how "coupled oscillators" are central to synchrony; presents their ubiquity, from fireflies to vehicular traffic; and accents the personalities who make synchrony a creative frontier of science (or who went over to the dark side--paranormal research--such as Nobelist Brian Josephson). With a personable narrative voice, Strogatz delivers the goods for followers of complexity theory. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Book News, Inc.
Strogatz (applied mathematics, Cornell U.) points out some examples of persistent order in the natural universe that seem to violate the laws of thermodynamics. He also describes the rise of a theory to explain such order.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Focus
"A vivid, first-hand account of what it is like to be at the beginning of a scientific revolution."
Nature
"Strogatz . . . is a first-rate storyteller and an even better teacher . . . SYNC is a great read."
New Scientist
"Offers a real sense of what it's like to be at the beginning of Something Big."
Popular Science
"The most exciting new book of the spring . . . Masterful . . . A gem."
Discover
"Describes dozens of sights and sounds that arise from collective, synchronized behavior . . . Delightful."
Leader-Post [Regina]
"Every now and then you come across a science book that's just fun and amazing to read."
Science
"Compulsively readable."
NewScientist.com
"Inspiring . . . offers a real sense of what it's like to be at the beginning of Something Big."
Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, Professor of Physics and Mathematics, Columbia University
"SYNC is a wonderfully lucid and thoroughly entertaining story of the emerging science of synchrony."
Charles S. Peskin, Professor of Mathematics and Neural Science, New York University
"Beautifully written and breathtaking in scope, SYNC tells both a personal and a scientific story."
Book Description
The moon spins in perfect resonance with its orbit around the Earth; millions of neurons fire together to control our breathing; every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies flash in silent, hypnotic unison. All of these astonishing feats of synchrony occur spontaneously -- as if the universe had an overwhelming desire for order. The tendency to synchronize may be the most mysterious and pervasive drive in all of nature. It has intrigued some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Norbert Wiener, Brian Josephson, and Arthur Winfree. But only in the past decade have scientists from disparate disciplines come to the stunning realization that the study of synchrony could revolutionize our understanding of everything from the origin of life to certain types of human behavior. At once elegant and riveting, SYNC tells the story of the dawn of a new science. As one of its pioneers, Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics. Along with vivid explanations of cutting-edge theory, Strogatz provides an intimate and highly personal narrative filled with often humorous anecdotes about some of the visionary thinkers of our time. He also describes the startling applications of this new knowledge, such as the harnessing of synchronized electrons to create the world's most sensitive detectors, able to locate oil buried deep underground and to pinpoint diseased tissues associated with epilepsy and heart arrhythmias. From life's little curiosities to the grandest unsolved mysteries of science, SYNC explores such questions as: -- Why traffic jams can occur even when there's no accident or other apparent cause -- Why women roommates sometimes find that their menstrual periods occur in sync -- What caused hundreds of Japanese children to fall into seizures while watching an episode of Pokemon -- What triggers riots, fads, and mass hysteria -- How synchrony in the solar system may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs -- How consciousness arises from the interplay of millions of mindless brain cells A tour de force of science and prose, SYNC reveals the hidden but beautiful order that governs the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of ourselves.
About the Author
Steven Strogatz received his doctorate from Harvard University and served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT before becoming a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University in 1994. Widely recognized for his groundbreaking discoveries in chaos and complexity theory, he has received numerous awards throughout his career, including MIT's highest teaching prize and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the White House. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, Carole, and their two daughters, Leah and Joanna.
Excerpted from Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync. It pervades nature at every scale from the nucleus to the cosmos. Every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies congregate in the mangroves and flash in unison, without any leader or cue from the environment. Trillions of electrons march in lockstep in a superconductor, enabling electricity to flow through it with zero resistance. In the solar system, gravitational synchrony can eject huge boulders out of the asteroid belt and toward Earth; the cataclysmic impact of one such meteor is thought to have killed the dinosaurs. Even our bodies are symphonies of rhythm, kept alive by the relentless, coordinated firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in our hearts. In every case, these feats of synchrony occur spontaneously, almost as if nature has an eerie yearning for order. And that raises a profound mystery: Scientists have long been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures -- galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings -- that have somehow managed to assemble themselves. This enigma bedevils all of science today. Only in a few situations do we have a clear understanding of how order arises on its own. The first case to yield was a particular kind of order in physical space involving perfectly repetitive architectures. It's the kind of order that occurs whenever the temperature drops below the freezing point and trillions of water molecules spontaneously lock themselves into a rigid, symmetrical crystal of ice. Explaining order in time, however, has proved to be more problematic. Even the simplest possibility, where the same things happen at the same times, has turned out to be remarkably subtle. This is the order we call synchrony. It may seem at first that there's little to explain. You can agree to meet a friend at a restaurant, and if both of you are punctual, your arrivals will be synchronized. An equally mundane kind of synchrony is triggered by a reaction to a common stimulus. Pigeons startled by a car backfiring will all take off at the same time, and their wings may even flap in sync for a while, but only because they reacted the same way to the same noise. They're not actually communicating about their flapping rhythm and don't maintain their synchrony after the first few seconds. Other kinds of transient sync can arise by chance. On a Sunday morning, the bells of two different churches may happen to ring at the same time for a while, and then drift apart. Or while sitting in your car, waiting to turn at a red light, you might notice that your blinker is flashing in perfect time with that of the car ahead of you, at least for a few beats. Such sync is pure coincidence, and hardly worth noting. The impressive kind of sync is persistent. When two things keep happening simultaneously for an extended period of time, the synchrony is probably not an accident. Such persistent sync comes easily to us human beings, and, for some reason, it often gives us pleasure. We like to dance together, sing in a choir, play in a band. In its most refined form, persistent sync can be spectacular, as in the kickline of the Rockettes or the matched movements of synchronized swimmers. The feeling of artistry is heightened when the audience has no idea where the music is going next, or what the next dance move will be. We interpret persistent sync as a sign of intelligence, planning, and choreography. So when sync occurs among unconscious entities like electrons or cells, it seems almost miraculous. It's surprising enough to see animals cooperating -- thousands of crickets chirping in unison on a summer night; the graceful undulating of schools of fish -- but it's even more shocking to see mobs of mindless things falling into step by themselves. These phenomena are so incredible that some commentators have been led to deny their existence, attributing them to illusions, accidents, or perceptual errors. Other observers have soared into mysticism, attributing sync to supernatural forces in the cosmos. Until just a few years ago, the study of synchrony was a splintered affair, with biologists, physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, and sociologists laboring in their separate fields, pursuing seemingly independent lines of inquiry. Yet little by little, a science of sync has begun coalescing out of insights from these and other disciplines. This new science centers on the study of "coupled oscillators." Groups of fireflies, planets, or pacemaker cells are all collections of oscillators -- entities that cycle automatically, that repeat themselves over and over again at more or less regular time intervals. Fireflies flash; planets orbit; pacemaker cells fire. Two or more oscillators are said to be coupled if some physical or chemical process allows them to influence one another. Fireflies communicate with light. Planets tug on one another with gravity. Heart cells pass electrical currents back and forth. As these examples suggest, nature uses every available channel to allow its oscillators to talk to one another. And the result of those conversations is often synchrony, in which all the oscillators begin to move as one. Those of us working in this emerging field are asking such questions as: How exactly do coupled oscillators synchronize themselves, and under what conditions? When is sync impossible and when is it inevitable? What other modes of organization are to be expected when sync breaks down? And what are the practical implications of all that we're trying to learn? Copyright © 2003 Steven Strogatz
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