In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems

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As a young child, I was interested in numbers – my mother told me I learned to read numbers aged three. The interaction between starlings depends not so much on the general distance between them as on the connections between the closest birds. Now that climate change is starting to affect people’s lives, there is perhaps a stronger reaction, but we need much more forceful measures to be taken. Hugh Everett’s mathematics showed the value in not needing to achieve decoherence to understand the system, but his interpretation in 1956 was not accepted by Bohr, even though Wheeler was initially excited by its prospects. Especially now, when I have left a room, and people talking, and the stone flags ring out with my solitary footsteps, and I behold the moon rising, sublimely, indifferently, over the ancient chapel — then it becomes clear that I am not one and simple, but complex and many.

This book is, in part, his attempt to “make the public aware of what science is and how science and culture are intertwined,” especially considering major societal issues like climate change and the covid-19 pandemic. Along the way, Parisi reflects on the lessons he's taken from a life in pursuit of scientific truth: the importance of serendipity to the discovery of new ideas, the surprising kinship between physics and other fields of study and the value of science to a thriving society. I read the book from the library, and after the story about the starlings, it quickly gets very complicated. If birds at the center tried to change the direction of the whole flock of thousands, it would result in a massive crash, but if the edge pulls away, the whole thing can gracefully stretch and change course, which is what makes it so entrancing.As Parisi explains, its the inverse with quantum mechanics, where the evolution of the state is deterministic and the selection measurement is randomly chosen among the various possible outcomes of the experiment. He explains the way in which he is able to to see connections hidden from others simply because of the multiplicity of the projects he has worked on over time. Giorgio Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the Sapienza University of Rome. In this delightful and deeply thoughtful book, Giorgio Parisi weaves a tapestry of experiences and ideas that connects disciplines and prepares us to appreciate the beauty, importance, and cultural value of science.

These concepts echo through nature, with nature being random in its initial selection and deterministic in its outcome. At high temperatures they behave like normal magnetic systems, but when the temperature falls below a certain value, they appear to behave like glass in that the magnetic changes get slower and it seems as if the system never reaches equilibrium.We must, as the saying goes, show our work: demonstrate in an engaging way how scientists toil, doubt, succeed, and fail. The first 18 pages was about his experience trying to define and capture how a collective gathering of starlings can move with incredible unison.

Giorgio Parisi: ‘Trying to describe some sophisticated physics problem without formulae takes real effort. My suspicions arose when I opened the file and found it was only 94 pages, divided over eight tiny chapters. This would limit energy consumption, thus saving money for energy-depleted Italians and reducing overall carbon emissions in the process. Richard Feynman’s lectures taught me to see the static particle apart from and as part of the dynamic wave.There were so many discussions about it, and it was amusing that everybody was saying that Parisi was saying this. There’s a growing lack of trust in science, with people denying Covid, or the need for vaccinations, or climate change. In between, there are chapters on Italian physicists he knows, his own history, which began in university in the keystone year of 1968, which he explains in detail, and anecdotes about other physicists and school in Italy.

He studied physics at the Sapienza University in the city, and is now a professor of quantum theories there. Giorgio Parisi is a theoretical physicist and professor of Quantum Theories at the Sapienza University of Rome. Einstein began thinking about relativity after he watched a housepainter falling from the scaffold around his apartment building. Overall his writing skills are very good - easy to follow and grasp without getting lost in his thoughts.

Part elegant scientific treatise, part thrilling intellectual journey, In a Flight of Starlings is an invitation to find wonder in the world around us. Studying the movements of these communities, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds-collections of everything from atoms and planets to other animals, such as ourselves. They look forward only, to the bird ahead, maintaining constant distance so that all can fly at the same speed, much as humans driving at fast highway speeds do (for the most part). The most beautiful and profound irony is that he found multiple equilibria by pursuing multiple equilibria … through time.