Review of Stephen Kellert's In the Wake of Chaos

Stephen Kellert's In the Wake of Chaos is a book in the field of philosophy of science. The book deals with a few philosophical issues that pertain to the now fashionable branch of mathematics known as chaos theory. Chaos theory examines the mathematics behind dynamic behavior, or chaotic systems, seeking patterns in their apparent absence.

The book has five chapters. The first one does a decent job of telling the reader what chaos theory is. It elaborates rather carefully on the exact definition of chaos theory.

The second chapter sorts out the epistemic, metaphysical, and methodological concerns that come up in chaos theory. It then addressses the question as to whether there is a difference between "in theory" and "in practice" when it comes to solving problems. Kellert then goes on to suggest that chaos theory provides a counterexample to that srrong distinction.

The third chapter is one of the stronger, and unfortunately one of the least related chapters to the rest of the book, does a good job on the ins and outs of determinism. What is it? What are the varieties that are important? What do we mean when we talk about the universe being deterministic? All of these questions are then held up to the foil of chaos theory to see if our previous notions still hold. For Kellert, they do not (really) hold.

The fourth chapter explores the concept of understanding vis-a-vis chaos theory. It seems like the chapter is geared to giving us the authors view of "dynamical understanding" which I find somewhat unsatisfying. It does a confused and poor job of separating the questions of explanation from understanding, and does not address explanation at all, though it pretends to.

Finally the fifth chapter which is genuinely the least satisfying, attempts to explore the question of why chaos theory took 50 years to catch on. This is done by appealing to institutionalized (male-like) prejudices against non-linearity. I had trouble seeing the problem, and even more trouble seeing why the solution he offered was satisfying even if you accepted that there was a problem.

This book is not for the mathematically uninitiated, though I think it is possible to understand most of what is going on without a serious mathematics background.

However, I do not think that it is that good a book that it was worth the read. There are better popular works out there on chaos theory and better philosophical ones. The treatment is not broadly and carefully philosophical enough that it is satisfying from that perspective, nor was it adequately expository so that one appreciated the nature of chaos theory. Nor was it technical enough so that it gave a good feel for the results.

That is not to say that a book needs all three. A book that had all three would be readable by about 4 people. But to be satisfying it needs to be at least one so that there is an audience who can benefit. This book had too little of all of them so as to be unsatisfying to all.