With the poems written by winner of the Posner Poetry Award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers in 2005, this coffee-table book will delight and inform general readers curious about ideas of chaos, fractals, and nonlinear complex systems. Developed out of ten years of interdisciplinary seminars in chaos and complex systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it features multiple ways of knowing: Robin Chapman's poems of everyday experience of change in a complex world, associated metaphorically with Julien Clinton Sprott's full-color computer art generated from billions of versions of only three simple equations for strange attractors, Julia sets, and iterated function systems; his definitions of 39 key terms; a mathematical appendix; and even a multiple-choice quiz to test understanding. Accompanied by a CD-ROM of the poet reading 13 poems and 1,000 images of chaos art from which slide shows can be generated and 100 high-resolution posters created, the book has a foreword by Cliff Pickover, author of A Passion for Mathematics.
Contents:
- Dynamical Systems
- Viewing Dynamics
- Where It All Ends
- Routes to Chaos
- Images of Chaos
- Chaos and Predictability
- Truth and Beauty
Readership: Researchers, mathematicians and readers interested in chaos, fractals, computer art and poetry.
“Complexity has spread like wildfire through many disciplines, revolutionizing the way we view the world around us. Robin Chapman and Clint Sprott celebrate the eclectic nature of Complexity with this beautiful and educational journey through science, art and literature.”
Richard Taylor
Professor of Physics, Psychology, and Art
University of Oregon
“This book is the future already here. On its pages, beauty and meaning are one, and art, poetry and science dance together in perfect time.”
Jesse Lee Kercheval
author of World as Dictionary and Dog Angel and Professor of English
University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Combining Julien Clinton Sprott's exquisite computer art — generated from equations that contain chaos — with Robin Chapman's deeply intelligent and moving poems — by turns meditative, narrative, descriptive, witty — this book reveals the elegant simplicity at the heart of infinite detail and variety. Bird, tree, air, flower; Mandelbrot set, non-linear system, fractal geometry, strange attractor; come together here in the most visually striking and intellectually satisfying fashion. Not since Robert Herrick explored the disorder of Julia's clothes (a Julia set, of sorts, perhaps?) has chaos had such a winsome articulation. In our increasingly fragmented world, where science and poetry, physics and art, may seem strange bedfellows, Chapman and Sprott's fertile collaboration has produced a book of wonders, a wonder of a book.”
Ronald Wallace
author of Long for This World and Professor of Poetry and English
University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Images of a Complex World showcases Chapman's considerable skills as a poet and Sprott's polished ability as a pedagogue … The illustrations offer subtle but effective conjunctions between art and science, reiterating the beauty of physics and the rigor of prosody … This book stands as a wonderful reminder of the joy we all get from our own discipline and from its conjunction with others. Though Chapman and Sprott make modest claims for their work, it is truly a stunning achievement.”
Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences
“This collection of Chapman's poems with Sprott's visual art and mathematical expositions is a welcome compilation and nicely shows the breadth of their work, both separately and in collaboration … Buy it or have your library purchase it, share it with your students, and dip into it when your creative pump needs priming.”
The Mathematical Intelligencer
“Images of a Complex World is an intriguing interdisciplinary effort … In summary: a provocative book; some striking images and poetry, new ideas.”
Journal of Mathematics and the Arts
CD-ROM
9789812775115SM01.iso (601799 KB)
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