商品簡介
Tsonis (mathematics, U. of Wisconsin) invites readers to share his fascination with the existence of rules, randomness, and infinity, and with the ways in which they interweave in the world around us. He identifies three sources of randomness--irreversibility, chaos, and interacting systems--and shows how infinity underlies all of them. Tsonis then considers the physical universe and demonstrates how randomness is an intrinsic property of nature. Finally, he shows readers why neither randomness nor rules can exist without the other. Tsonis' fictional chapters (especially the account of a meeting between artist M.C. Escher and physicist Kurt Godel) are particularly suitable for non-mathematicians. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
