Intermittency

The book is disjointed and speculative so that it is hard to take any of the arguments seriously. It is strange to find this in a book about science, but then perhaps it is not a science book! Some remarks comparing scientific research today with demonology several hundred years ago make you wonder. It is almost as bad as 'The Web of Life' by Fritjof Capra (conversely if you liked that book, you will like this one too). Oddly enough, although the book claims not to be about Chaos but about 'Universality', it is Chaos that appears in the title. I am fairly familiar with the research into chaos theory, but having read this book I still cannot really tell you what 'Universality' is, other than that it seems to involve everything (!). In any case, the book presents even the better data on the subject poorly.

On a general note, in thinking of fractals (discussed extensively but loosely in the book) I wonder if we are not over-interpreting the data. After all, mathematicians have known all along that mathematical models can represent a variety of natural processes and yet have no causal relation to them. Similarly, when we see fractals in a wide variety of biological structures and processes, is it because fractals are fundamental to them, or because, as I suspect, a fractal can be used to model anything? Is it the chicken or the egg?

One would think that 300 pages discussing science theory would have some substance but this book could have been edited down to an eight page magazine article with little loss of content. And not a "heavy" magazine for scientists but a "popular" type magazine. I forced myself to stay with it hoping that the author would eventually get serious but the book stayed chatty and anecdotal to the end. According to the bio Mr. Ward is a science writer for the BBC and I did get the feeling of a TV narration purposely kept light in order not to scare off any viewers.

I found myself rereading series of pages because I had the feeling that I had missed something and then finding that I hadn't missed a thing, there was simply no content to retain. This happened repeatedly and made this book a real chore to finish and ultimately unrewarding. A shame too because the premises Mr. Ward teases the reader with are intriguing but the book fails miserably to live up to the promises made on the dust cover. Budding authors should seek out his agent however, that individual is well worth his fee!

Understanding why you're reading this book makes all the difference. I used this book as a carefree nightly read around an interesting topic, and it worked! Using this book to solve problems would be a mistake. There's not enough detail and it won't work.
The author approached Universality from enough angles to brighten my world to possible unexplored connections. Unfortunately, the author's light dimmed a bit when he didn't stay "on-message" 15% of the time, wherein I skipped forward some pages. Hense, the 3 stars.
Overall, read this book as an intro, and lighten up!