Overview
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Keywords
- calculus of variations
- forms
- natural world
- optimal design
- shapes
- soap films
About this book
The variety of sizes, shapes, and irregularities in nature is endless. Through illustrations and text, the authors of The Parsimonious Universe describe the efforts by scientists and mathematicians since the Renaissance to identify and describe the basic laws underlying the shape of natural forms. Can one set of laws account for both the symmetry and irregularity as well as the infinite variety of nature's designs? Complete answers to these questions are likely novel to be discovered. Still, down through the ages, the investigation of form and pattern in nature has yielded some fascinating and surprising insights. Out of this inquiry comes a specific branch of mathematics - the calculus of variations - which explores questions of optimization (finding designs that maximize or minimize a particular quantity).
Reviews
"The numerous carefully chosen illustrations, the witty quotations opening each chapter, but especially a perfect way of explaining things - all these make the book really attractive." EMS Newsletter
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Parsimonious Universe
Book Subtitle: Shape and Form in the Natural World
Authors: Stefan Hildebrandt, Anthony Tromba
Publisher: Copernicus New York, NY
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eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media New York 1996
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4612-7532-9
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 330
Number of Illustrations: 124 b/w illustrations, 299 illustrations in colour