Donald Noble's Website

A book describing a multitude of seemingly random interconnected ideas, and how these relate to the society we live in. Although Philip Ball uses a lot of mathematical and statistical analyses, it is not a book about maths—rather it is a book about how individuals interact with each other to form a coherent society that best benefits us all—and how and why this fails.

Some of the many areas covered include how the phase transitions of a material (between solid, liquid and gas), also appear in other forms—including bizarrely—traffic congestion on a motorway. The statistics of large numbers, and deviations from averages. And the development of Game Theory, and how this impacts on issues such as free trade and world politics.

In much the same way as Bill Bryson’s “Brief History of Nearly Everything”, the book outlines the historical development of many of the ideas contained within, to better understand the intricacies, flaws, and potential future developments of the theories and methods. This makes for a much more enjoyable read, than if it were purely a textbook of theories, although it is by no means an easy read!

I was compelled to buy this book mainly on the strength of the quotation from Bill Bryson on the cover “A dazzlingly well informed book… I can promise you’ll be amazed.”—although the topic did sound rather interesting too.

This entry was posted on Monday 11th September 2006 in Blog and tagged books, mathematics, review, Science, world_politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.