Counting Book

This book goes down like a high school cafeteria salad bar - plenty of variety but overwhelmingly mediocre.

It seems as though Ruelle simply sat down one Saturday and thought, "Hey, I think I'll write a book" and proceeded to regurgitate his stream of consciousness onto paper for the next several hours. Ruelle gives a somewhat shallow introduction to a huge variety of interesting topics but jumps from one to the next so fast that nothing sticks. "Chance and Chaos" reads more like a series of blog posts than a unified book. This book might be useful to someone who has never heard of a Turing machine, algorithmic complexity, or sensitive dependence on initial conditions but those who have will likely walk away unsatisfied.

Ruelle also harbors an odd obsession with Freudian psychoanalysis and awkwardly cites it as often as possible. I had thought Freudian psychology held about as much scientific clout as intelligent design but perhaps it's still quite a contender in continental Europe.

On the upside, Ruelle is an entertaining writer and offers many interesting and effective analogies for difficult concepts as well as an abundance of color commentary and stories on how science is (or should be) done. I plan on looking into some of his more focused and rigorous texts and papers on statistical physics and chaos, as I suspect he might shine when reined in a bit.

And so, my search for good popular books on information and chaos continues...