MLA 31500

Natural Sciences Elective

Order and Chaos in the Natural World

Spring Quarter 2008

FIRST WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Due May 3, 2008

Analyze, compare, and contrast the presentations of order and chaos by Ian Stewart, Edward Lorenz, and David Ruelle in their popular accounts of the subject in the readings for this course. Address your paper to a well-informed, generally educated reader. Thus, you should write for a reader who might read the New York Times regularly, who might look into an issue of Scientific American occasionally, or who might consider enrolling in the MLA Program. In particular, you should not assume that your reader has a technical background. Thus, where your review addresses technical issues, take care to explain those issues for the non-expert.

One possible approach to this assignment would be to write the paper as a review of the books Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos by Ian Stewart, The Essence of Chaos by Edward Lorenz, and Chance and Chaos by David Ruelle. A review of the kind that might appear among the book reviews in the Sunday New York Times or Chicago Tribune would be appropriate.

An appropriate paper would address issues or questions concerning attributes of the presentations that characterize and distinguish the approaches that the three authors take to the subject. A list of some such questions follows.

1. How is the subject of chaos defined or described by each author?

2. What is the scope of the subject of chaos as portrayed by each author?

3. What organizing principles govern the choice of material for inclusion in each account?

4. For each author, what is novel about the subject? Why is the subject important?

5. According to the authors, how does the study of chaos relate to the traditional organization of scientific disciplines or to conventional formulations of scientific investigations?

6. How has the subject altered the landscape of modern science?

7. How, if at all, is the approach of each author influenced by his background (e.g, his scientific discipline, his experience in the subject of chaos, or his cultural and national origin)?

8. Do the personalities of the authors or their personal styles in doing science influence their approaches to the subject?

The paper should be relatively brief; a length of the order of 1500-2500 words would be a reasonable target. (That would be about 3-5 pages, single-spaced, in a 12 pt Times font.) Thus, a paper cannot address all of the questions that one might raise along the foregoing lines. Be selective, and concentrate on a coherent subset of all possible questions.

Papers will be evaluated with respect to the following five equally weighted categories.

SUBJECT: How does each author define or describe the subject of chaos, and what is the scope of the subject for each?

ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES: What organizing principles govern the choice of material for inclusion in each presentation, and how do those principles determine the way in which each author presents the material? Are differences in the scientific and personal backgrounds of the authors significant here?

RELATION TO ESTABLISHED SCIENCES: According to the authors, how does the study of chaos relate to the traditional organization of scientific disciplines or to traditional approaches to scientific investigations?

IMPACT ON ESTABLISHED SCIENCES: What is novel about the subject, and why is it important? What has been the impact of the study of chaos on established fields of science?

LEVEL OF THIS PAPER: Is this paper addressed to appropriate readers, who are generally but not technically educated? Are explanations of technical matters adequate for such readers?

LINKS:

Return to Course Page: mla315spring2008.htm

Return to Peter Vandervoort's Home Page: pov.html

Go to the home page of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics

of the University of Chicago: http://astro.uchicago.edu/