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Fluke : chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters / Brian Klaas.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Scribner, 2024Edition: First Scribner hardcover editionDescription: ix, 323 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781668006528
  • 1668006529
  • 9781668055847
  • 1668055848
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction -- Changing anything changes everything -- Everything doesn't happen for a reason -- Why our brains distort reality -- The human swarm -- Heraclitus rules -- The storytelling animal -- The lottery of Earth -- Everyone's a butterfly -- Of clocks and calendars -- The emperor's new equations -- Could it be otherwise? -- Why everything we do matters.
Summary: A social scientist dispels people's tidy versions of reality and delves deeply into the theories of random chance and chaos to demonstrate that the world really works through random events that can alter the trajectory of our lives.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Dr. James Carlson Library NonFiction New 123.3 K63 Checked out 06/06/2024 33111011112295
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction New 123.3 K63 Available 33111011241045
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Want to know what chaos theory can teach us about human events? In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works--and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas.

If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind?

In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas dives deeply into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people's neat and tidy storybook version of reality. The book's argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives--and our societies--could be radically different.

Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple's vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents?

Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen--all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.

It includes bibliographical references and index.

A social scientist dispels people's tidy versions of reality and delves deeply into the theories of random chance and chaos to demonstrate that the world really works through random events that can alter the trajectory of our lives.

Introduction -- Changing anything changes everything -- Everything doesn't happen for a reason -- Why our brains distort reality -- The human swarm -- Heraclitus rules -- The storytelling animal -- The lottery of Earth -- Everyone's a butterfly -- Of clocks and calendars -- The emperor's new equations -- Could it be otherwise? -- Why everything we do matters.

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