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Giorgio Parisi

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In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems Kindle Edition

by Giorgio Parisi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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From the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, an enlightening and personal journey into the practice of groundbreaking science

“[Giorgio Parisi is] an extraordinary scientist.” —Carlo Rovelli

With In a Flight of Starlings, celebrated physicist Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work, starting with investigating the principles of physics by observing the flight of flocks of birds. 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.

Along the way, he reflects on the lessons he has 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 disciplines, and the value of science to a thriving society. In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and brings it into the real world.

Part elegant scientific treatise, part thrilling journey of discovery, In a Flight of Starlings is an invitation to find wonder in the world around us.

Print length

144 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Penguin Press
Publication date

July 11, 2023
File size

7875 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“It doesn’t take interest or a background in physics to appreciate Parisi’s work. Writing in clear terms for the layperson that avoid making the reader feel like they’ve wandered into a lecture hall, the physicist offers a glimpse into his work and a look at how scientific research has evolved over the years . . . The deceptively slim volume serves as a forceful argument for the value of scientific literacy at a time when it’s increasingly being challenged by misinformation . . . Parisi’s book is a step toward making physics feel more accessible.” —Associated Press

“An interesting collection of essays reflecting on [Parisi’s] long career in science . . . The scientific explanations are admirably lucid.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Stimulating . . . This ode to the scientific process fascinates.” —Publishers Weekly

“Parisi’s voice is amiable and conversational, which endows [In a Flight of Starlings] with the feel of a conversation with a wise and generous elder.” —Kirkus

“[Giorgio Parisi is] an extraordinary scientist.” —Carlo Rovelli

“Giorgio Parisi is renowned for his scientific creativity, originality, and power. In this exhilarating little book, he shows his human side, too. By its end, readers will feel they’ve made a charming, witty new friend.” —Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Fundamentals

“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.” —Frances Arnold, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

About the Author

Giorgio Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the Sapienza University of Rome. Together with Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe, he received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PREFACE

At this moment in time, perhaps more than any before it, it is essential that the public have a fundamental understanding of the practice of science—that is to say, not only the results at which scientists arrive but how they do so. Examples of this urgency surround us. To name what is probably the most urgent, we must make some essential decisions in order to fight climate change. For decades, science has been warning us that human behavior is setting the stage for a dramatic rise in the temperature of our planet. But science alone is not enough. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes—but only if we heed the warning and act on it.

Unfortunately, the actions taken by governments to date have not been up to this challenge, and the results so far have been extremely modest. 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. Political decisions are needed, especially by the wealthiest countries. We need to transcend our myopic national interests in order to solve global problems. To name a second example, COVID has taught us that we are all connected: what happens in game markets or in the Amazon rain forest deeply affects us all. The recent pandemic has also shown that it is not easy to respond effectively in time. We have seen how measures to contain the pandemic were often taken too late, only when they could no longer be postponed. I remember the head of one European government saying that “we cannot go into lockdown until the hospitals are full; otherwise people will not understand the decision to do so.”

Our generation is on a road fraught with dangers. It is as if we were driving at night: the sciences are our headlights, but it is the responsibility of the driver to not leave the road and to take into account that the headlights have a limited range. In order to use those lights in the first place, however, we need to have trust in science.

We have seen during the pandemic the tragedy of the many people who have died refusing to be vaccinated, despite the millions of COVID-related deaths. This has happened thanks to a re- jection of science that becomes even more serious when it occurs in relation to climate change.

If citizens and politicians do not trust science, we will move inexorably in the wrong direction, and the struggle against any number of global ills—global warming, infectious disease, hunger and poverty, the depletion of the planet’s natural resources— will fail.

How can we promote this trust? Clearly it is not enough for scientists themselves to simply say “trust us.” It is also not enough to write scholarly articles about how science works. We must, as the saying goes, show our work: demonstrate in an engaging way how scientists toil, doubt, succeed, and fail. It is important to understand how scientific consensus is achieved, how individual discoveries become validated by the scientific community.

To this end, in this book I have told something of my own story through select reports on significant episodes in my scientific life. I begin with my research into the flight of starlings, those remarkably beautiful murmurations (their flocking behavior) that the physics of this century is only now in a position to explain. I wanted to start there to emphasize how difficult it is to understand the many phenomena that we observe almost daily and to convey that complexity is not about what happens in laboratories. It is about what happens all around us. Our job as scientists is to illuminate for everyone the truths that we discover.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B9WM1JMW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (July 11, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 11, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7875 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 180206088X

Best Sellers Rank: #116,540 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Chaos & Systems
- #51 in Biographies of Scientists
- #116 in Science History & Philosophy

Customer Reviews:
4.2 77 ratings

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JordanUnicycle

Really an interesting read.

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2023

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He's really a fascinating character.

I like that it chronicled some of his life as well as the technology of the time.
I can't imagine trying to dictate an entire publication over an international call.
We can hardly handle the grocery list!
"Just text me". They couldn't!

One person found this helpful

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Larry Deemer

Hoped for more of his thoughts about complex systems beyond starlings flying and nuclear physics.

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2023

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The first 18 pages was about his experience trying to define and capture how a collective gathering of starlings can move with incredible unison. He went into detail explaining how he organized a method to achieve his goal of recreating a three dimenssional model by using photography of the flock in flight, as well as adding some physics to the process.

The remaining 102 pages was about his career in physics at the quantum level. All very interesting even if I didn't grasp the more detailed parts of atomic structures and their behaviors with each other.

The last three chapters were very good - "Metaphor in Science", "How Ideas are Born", and "The Meaning of Science." These chapters helped bridge the two parts of the book.

I was still hoping to read about other example of complex sysyems. He did write briefly about "waves-and-wheat comparisons."

Overall his writing skills are very good - easy to follow and grasp without getting lost in his thoughts.

3 people found this helpful

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Susan V.A.

Don’t waste your money on the Sandra hunt “workbook”.

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023

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I read the book from the library, and after the story about the starlings, it quickly gets very complicated. I barely got through the required physics class in college, and that was many years ago. So I ordered the book so I could study it at my leisure. And I included the workbook by Sandra Huit. DONT WASTE MONEY ON THE WORKBOOK.

4 people found this helpful

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Rachel Gollub

Interesting, meandering subjects

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2023

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Parisi uses this book to connect some disparate scientific fields that he’s spent time on, from the way starlings flock to the spin glass work that won him a Nobel prize. The book kind of wanders, but was a pretty cool look at his career and experiences.

One person found this helpful

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Dr. Arthur E. Rinehart

The Starling

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2023

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It makes theoretical physics available to lay person.

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SJ

Didn't learn anything . . . .

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2023

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I learned nothing either about Physics or about the author from reading this book. The anecdotes failed to give any sense of personality or deliberative process, and the physics were explained (when they were explained, which wasn't often) as if to another professional physicist, and not to a regular reader.

7 people found this helpful

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CMP

The book brought so many loose threads together that it was truly a joyful experience to read.

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2023

The book is a compendium of a lifetime of theoretical and experimental research that is told in a straight-forward manner.
He is humble and gracious.
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.

The most beautiful and profound irony is that he found multiple equilibria by pursuing multiple equilibria … through time.
He explains that a key to understanding disordered systems is to observe them through time.

These concepts echo through nature, with nature being random in its initial selection and deterministic in its outcome.
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.

No wonder QM has always made sense to this biologist/engineer.
In a humorous way, it was, like an integer raised to the power-of-a-half results in the square root.
Seemingly backwards or neurodiverse, but really just a relation in a family of equations.

He followed his curiosity through multiple fields simply to answer questions of “why?” and “how does that work?”.
A kinship/fellowship of the curious.

Richard Feynman’s lectures taught me to see the static particle apart from and as part of the dynamic wave. Heisenberg explained the discontinuity. 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.

Parisi followed-up on all of these teachings by looking at the whole disordered system from different angles, just like when photographing the flocks of starlings being hunted by Peregrine falcons.
When you have multiple minima and the ball keeps on rolling and the dynamics change as a function of time.

The book is a lovely overview of complex systems and shared mathematical similarities across fields.
Its not written in the language of mathematics, which is great for the reader who may not be as fluent in the language of symbols (which can differ even among the sciences).

It is not a how-to manual for physics or life. Its a step-back and think-about-how-things-work book that is important for understanding what real science is and how it is achieved.
It takes a lifetime and there isn’t just one answer or solution. There are many.

Its a journey of discovery of the many wonderful multiple equilibria in our universe.

5 people found this helpful

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stillafewleft

Interesting thoughts about scientific discovery

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2023

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Much of it is fascinating, a tour of areas of physics with which I was unfamiliar and the author's outside the box, stimulating takes on what has worked for him in scientific research and why. A little heavy on autobiography in a few parts, but overall an excellent short read. Definitely recommend.

One person found this helpful

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