Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

The tendency to synchronize is one of the most far reaching drives in all of nature, extending from people to plants, from animals to atoms. Sync is the story of this dazzling kind of order in the universe, the harmony that comes from cycles in sync, written by the mathematician who created the science. The tendency to synchronize may be the most mysterious and pervasive drive in all of nature. It has intrigued some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Norbert Wiener, Brian Josephson, and Arthur Winfree.

At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.