"Sync"
by Steven H. Strogatz

Topic: coupled oscillators, applied math

Tonight the Beijing Olympic games (um... 2008) have opened with a huge bass of square drums made of bronze and wood that covered the central stadium. Each drum would glow when hit by a dedicated person, a drummer, or artist standing next. The performance was inspired by Confucius the wizard and had a poetic text from his mind chanted out into the night. At this time I am still compelled to pronounce with whisper "oh the Sync" now that I had encountered it.




I went on a sea-side holiday with that math textbook, which I call a risk (for ruining vacation) unless its a damn good book. Reviews were hot so I trusted the technical minded who praised it (oh, advertisement). In general it is made to be perfect. The only quality that I share is the inclination to write something that is still good even if you tear off a piece. Its called scientific publishing.

At one point Strogatz says that math is a great science that allows you to work in any other field of science - because you know math. Therefore his book might be self-explanatory if his life path didn't really lead to the research and heroes he touched or worked with. The universal tool that he brought along are puzzles of coupled oscillators that tend to get into some form of sync.

The topic of the book is rightfully about EMERGING SCIENCE of spontaneous order. Many have written so far about the spontaneous spatial complexity, but time-dimension somehow allowed the author to sound by far better and more rational when it comes to nature, chaos, and all that. "We may be missing an equivalent of calculus" when we try to process complexity and chaos, he says.

When technical-minded people start to learn something about themselves, or something living as it happened in this book without preparation, they set sail into such a cheerful predisposition, full of surprises reading about bugs and sleep cycle. Some part of the books deals with non-living sync, a little bit of physics, and various mixed topics to surprise you. Fortunately only the words "quantum" and "laser" belong to popular science writing, otherwise its rather new and fun! How odd! - Absolute perfection in writing style for every sentence, fast readability and every few pages I just would say: "damn interesting". - Popular science I figure, rarely goes out.

"Brain can listen to only one song at a time because it is a non-linear system which is not the sum of its parts", so you can't add more and more in parallel. "Sync" rests a lot on the nature of differential equations which are quietly and completely explained. Sometimes the problems mentioned are about networks.

"Sync" is providing us with enlightenment and a landscape of new science. I wish that textbooks and everything else were that gay, or great. M. N. Shyamalan said once that he wished we would break rules so often as to establish new ones, and in a way that is what is "applied" here maybe just by chance through visits to fascinating areas of life and science which resonate well with the edge of mind upon I dwell when the Olympics become boring.