This book didn't work for me. The subject is interesting: how components of animate and inanimate systems reach sync as a mathematical consequence of their individual behaviors. But the book is more a professional memoir of the problems Strogatz has worked on than a systematic survey of the topic, and I kept finding myself baffled by the transitions between chapters. Strogatz eschews mathematical equations, which I appreciated, but his analogies raised more questions for me than they provided answers, and the conclusions he drew from them didn't seem at all obvious to me - perhaps one has to see the math. Bottom line: this book offered lots of interesting facts about various systems, including circadian rhythms and fireflies, but no framework that will stay with me or that I can use to orient future information on the same topic. ( )

This is a fairly good book that ties together a lot of the topics in complex systems that I've been interested in for the past decade or so. I was a bit disappointed in the complete lack of equations, even in the notes, and many of his explanatory metaphors were so weird that they didn't really help much. ( )

Following up on reading Emergence, I read Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (2003) by Steven Strogatz. The book sums up the history and many applications of this hot topic in mathematics, much of it the story of Strogatz's own life research. Strogratz touches on many examples of living creatures and non-biological things syncronizing to one another without any leader to tell them what to do Topics include fireflies in Malaysia that blink in sync (sadly I could not find video of this phenomenon online), our circadian rhythms, 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon and pacemaker cells in the heart. While Strogatz makes every effort to fill this book with analogies for mathematical concepts, I still found it a slow if fascinating read. I recommend reading Peter O'Malley for a good summary/review of Sync.

Here are a couple of examples I found on YouTube illustrating some concepts from the book.

Metronome Synchronization:

[youtube="http://youtube.com/watch?v=yysnkY4WHyM"]

The opening of the Millenium Bridge in London where pedestrians inadvertently walking in sync cause the bridge to vibrate in unexpected ways:

[youtube="http://youtube.com/watch?v=gQK21572oSU"]

Finally, pay a visit to the Radio Labs website and download the podcast for their episode on Emergence where I first heard of the concept and was inspired to read these two books. ( )

: American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University... seminar work on complex network.
Pros: interesting topic; good and passionate writing; good story teller
Cons: not very convincing at places; many connections are very stretchy; sloppy logic and over-generalization at places. ( )

by Steven Strogatz, who also wrote my nonlinear dynamics textbook. Both of which are pretty good - he has a good writing style :) Yay, people who can explain things clearly. It's a really interesting book, too... about the study of synchronisation (e.g. pendulums synchronising themselves, lasers, fireflies flashing in unison) and how the field developed recently. It focuses a lot on the people involved, too, which is fun to read. I liked this one a lot. :) ( )