Sync by Strogatz is a tremendous book. It begins with some simple questions: Why do crickets harmonize as a chorus on summer nights? Why does the moon spin in sync with its orbit? Why do audiences clap simultaneously? In searching for the answers to these questions, we find an unfolding of the universe through the notion of spontaneous order.
Sync is not an anomaly but rather one of the deepest drives in existence. Whether at a massive scale like the universe or a microscopic scale like atoms, spontaneous sync emerges rejecting entropy.
"For reasons we don't yet understand, the tendency to synchronize is one of the most pervasive drives in the universe, extending from atoms to animals, from people to planets. Female friends or coworkers who spend a great deal of time together often find that their menstrual periods tend to start around the same day. Sperm swimming side by side en route to the egg beat their tails in unison. Sometimes sync can be pernicious: Epilepsy is caused by millions of brain cells discharging in pathological lockstep, causing the rhythmic convulsions associated with seizures. Even lifeless things can synchronize. The astounding coherence of a laser beam comes from trillions of atoms pulsing in concert, all emitting photons of the same phase and frequency. Over the course of millennia, the incessant effects of the tides have locked the moon's spin to its orbit. It now turns on its axis at precisely the same rate as it circles the earth, which is why we never see its dark side."
Strogatz is a leading researcher in chaos and complexity theory. He's also a Professor in Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He analyzes the mathematical theory of self-organization, where millions of simultaneous interactions result in order emerging from chaos.
"The richness of the world around us is due, in large part, to the miracle of self-organization. Unfortunately, our minds are bad at grasping these kinds of problems. We're accustomed to thinking in terms of centralized control, clear chains of command, the straightforward logic of cause and effect. But in huge, interconnected systems, where every player ultimately affects every other, our standard ways of thinking fall apart."
Ultimately, Sync is asking the big questions of existence. Who am I? What is consciousness? Is there a correlation between neurological sync and memory?
Great book.
"It is a wonderful feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena that to direct observation appear to be quite separate things. On the surface, Huygen's pendulums and Josephson's junctions appear like polar opposites. Pendulums are comfortable and familiar, human in scale, as common as a child playing on a swing, as cozy as the ticking of a grandfather clock. Superconducting junctions are alien, almost otherworldly, no bigger than a bacterium, with frenzied electrical oscillations 100 billion times faster than a heartbeat, the surreal consequence of electrons passing through impenetrable barriers like ghosts walking through walls. No matter. Those differences are gloss. Fundamentally, the dynamics of Josephson junctions and pendulums are the same. Their patterns in time are identical: two variations on a single algebraic theme."