Contemporary Physics

ISSN: 0010-7514 (Print) 1366-5812 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcph20

Applied symbolic dynamics and chaos, 2nd edition

B. Hao and W. Zheng, Singapore, World Scientific, 2018, 500 pp., $168.00
(hardback), ISBN 9789813236424. Scope: monograph. Level: postgraduate,
early career researcher, researcher, scientist.

Miguel A. F. Sanjuán

To cite this article: Miguel A. F. Sanjuán (2019) Applied symbolic dynamics and chaos, 2nd
edition, Contemporary Physics, 60:3, 263-264, DOI: 10.1080/00107514.2019.1641160

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00107514.2019.1641160

Published online: 25 Jul 2019.

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 CONTEMPORARY PHYSICS 263

Mathematical methods in science and Hamilton principle with applications to control and dynam-
engineering, 2nd edition, by Selçuk S. Bayin, ics are the subjects of another chapter. Finally, one chap-
Hoboken, NJ, Wiley, 2018, 864 pp., £125.00 ter covers integral equations with applications, and Green’s
functions, path integrals and path integral Feynman for-
(hardback), ISBN 978-111-9425-39-7. Scope: textbook.
mulation of quantum mechanics are offered in the final
Level: advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, chapters.
researcher, scientist, engineers. Precisely in relation to mathematical methods for the
sciences, it is a pity that the terminology and the nomen-
Definitely, Mathematical Methods in Science and Engineer- clature are not unified, since this can contribute to a cer-
ing, second edition, is a textbook providing numerous tain confusion. Traditionally this has been the case with
mathematical techniques and tools that may be applied certain topics such as vectors and tensors, as well as oth-
to different scientific and engineering disciplines. Most of ers, which receive different notations in areas of physics,
these applied mathematical methods have been used par- engineering and applied mathematics. A greater unifica-
ticularly in theoretical physics. Nevertheless, the idea of the tion would be important, since fortunately, as this textbook
new edition is to expand the applications beyond physics, shows, the methods are of general application to the sciences
to numerous other scientific disciplines such as chemistry, and engineering.
biology, economy, and finance, showing the utility of these It would have been desirable that new references would
advanced mathematical methods. have been added to the bibliography in the second edition.
The book is organised into 19 chapters, where the dif- Another aspect that would have much improved the book
ferent mathematical methods are included. Even though would have been to classify the different techniques and
the book lacks sections or parts, the first eight chapters are methods in sections or parts. Furthermore, in spite of the
devoted to special functions, such as Legendre, Laguerre, importance and relevance that nowadays have the computa-
Hermite, and Chebyschev polynomials, including special tional methods and numerical algorithms, these are lacking
functions such as Bessel and Hypergeometric functions, and in the textbook.
the Sturm-Liouville theory. The structure of each chapter The text can be used for the classroom, as well as a refer-
is rather similar, and contains a detailed description of the ence for students and researchers. As I commented earlier,
subject matter with applications in physics and other disci- many chapters or groups of chapters can be read indepen-
plines. Some interesting particular examples of applications dently from one another, so it can be used also for self-
are included, and at the end of each chapter there is a brief study. In any case, it gives the readers the strong foundation
and useful bibliography on the topic and its applications, needed to apply mathematical methods to the physical phe-
and a collection of unsolved problems. Among the applica- nomena found in scientific and engineering applications.
tions, there are examples in classical and quantum physics, From this perspective, the book can be of interest to a wide
and computer graphics. audience, ranging from postgraduates and researchers in
An interesting and rather comprehensive chapter focuses physics, engineering and other scientific disciplines inter-
on coordinate systems, vectors, tensors, and generalised ested in advanced mathematical methods of analysis.
coordinates with special applications to special relativity and
the theory of elasticity. Besides being self-contained, it can
be used independently from the rest of the book, provid- Miguel A. F. Sanjuán
ing an excellent overview of its applicability to science and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
engineering, and in this case to physics. [email protected]
Group theory, including Lie groups and Lie algebras, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3515-0837
is contained in another chapter, considering ideas of sym- © 2019 Miguel A. F. Sanjuán
metries in whatever discipline in physics. It can be use- https://doi.org/10.1080/00107514.2019.1641159
ful to refresh the ideas for those who already know, or to
learn them from those who do not know, in any case in
a synthetic manner. A couple of chapters consider com-
plex variables and integrals, with numerous applications
to electrostatics and fluids, where some special functions Applied symbolic dynamics and chaos, 2nd
such as Gamma and Beta functions are included. Fractional edition, B. Hao and W. Zheng, Singapore, World
calculus, its mathematical techniques and applications to
Scientific, 2018, 500 pp., $168.00 (hardback), ISBN
science and engineering constitute another chapter. Much
research is currently underway using techniques from frac- 9789813236424. Scope: monograph. Level:
tional differential equations so that this chapter is a good postgraduate, early career researcher, researcher,
asset for that purpose. Another group of chapters includes scientist.
infinite series, Fourier and Laplace transformations and
integral transformations. Variational analysis and applica- The book Applied Symbolic Dynamics and Chaos, second
tions to classical mechanics and Hamiltonian equations and edition, belongs to a series of books in advanced physics.
264 BOOK REVIEWS

Two Chinese physicists, pioneers in the applications of these using its techniques by scientists outside the mathematics
methods in the field of nonlinear dynamics and chaos, are community, such as physicists and engineers.
the authors of this monograph. Hardly can the effort they This clearly poses a dilemma, since symbolic dynamics
made in writing the book be understood, if one ignores the is a practical tool in studying chaotic dynamics, and at the
effort they made in the 1980s of the past century to lead same time most of the literature has been mathematically
this research work in the world. Numerous publications had oriented.
appeared in the best physics journals by members of the From this point of view, this book constituted one of
scientific school led by Prof. Bailin Hao in Beijing, before the first attempts to offer applications of symbolic dynamics
the publication of the first edition appeared in 1998. Sym- to physicists and engineers. The reader can find a descrip-
bolic dynamics was originated as a general method to study tion of the most important discrete dynamical systems,
dynamical systems at large, in which context its techniques all of them analysed with detail. Furthermore, in this sec-
have been developed and applied. Nevertheless, its ideas and ond edition, the authors have revised mainly applications
techniques are so basic and of general application that it is to ordinary differential equations and their corresponding
no surprise that nowadays they have found significant appli- Poincaré maps. Moreover, an extensive bibliography and
cations in other areas in science. When teaching nonlinear many computer codes are also offered, what supposes a help
dynamics, one of the very first questions is to explain that for the student who wants to enter the field. The book can
dynamical systems are the object of study, and that they be considered a classic in the field, containing very useful
may be continuous or discrete depending on how we mea- and important information for any researcher and student
sure time. In symbolic dynamics, time is always measured interested in chaotic dynamics, independently of the focus
in discrete intervals, indicating the particular state in which of study. It can be convenient for teaching the subject to
the system is. A symbol is associated to each state and the graduate students, as well for self-study and a good refer-
dynamics is described by an infinite sequence of symbols. ence in the library of any scientist interested in methods of
When we have a continuous dynamical system, then we chaotic dynamics.
would need to discretise the system to get a coarse-grained
description of the dynamics. Miguel A. F. Sanjuán
The methods and techniques of symbolic dynamics con- Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
stitute a very rich and fruitful way to attack the analysis [email protected]
of dynamics. Interestingly, the field has been built by many http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3515-0837
brilliant mathematicians. Historically, we need to remember
one key paper written by the French mathematician Jacques © 2019 Miguel A. F. Sanjuán
https://doi.org/10.1080/00107514.2019.1641160
Hadamard in 1898, though the first systematic study was
done by Marsten Morse and Gustav Hedlund in the 1940s
of the last century, who as a matter of fact coined the term
symbolic dynamics. Similar ideas applied in the analysis of
second-order differential equations were developed by key Michelson–Morley experiments – an enigma for
figures in the history of chaos theory by mathematicians like
physics and the history of science, by Maurizio
George Birkhoff, Norman Levinson, Mary Cartwright and
J. E. Littlewood. The last ones, it is noteworthy to mention, Consoli and Alessandro Pluchino, Singapore, World
participated in the radar project during World War II and Scientific, 2018, 196 pp., £70.00 (hardback), ISBN:
the well-known van der Pol oscillator was the object of their 978-981-3278-18-9. Scope: monograph. Level:
studies. Also, Claude Shannon used symbolic sequences and advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, early career
shifts of finite type in the 1940s to code information chan- researcher, researcher, specialist.
nels. Subsequently, the techniques were extensively used in
ergodic theory, topological and hyperbolic dynamics, infor- Michelson-Morley experiments are a class of experiments
mation theory and complex dynamics. The influence of the within physics that have originally been designed to check
methods from symbolic dynamics in chaos theory has been Maxwell’s prediction that the velocity of light as measured
very extensive, and one of them is the Sharkovskii’s theorem in different directions on Earth is anisotropic as the Earth
in 1964 about periodic orbits of a continuous map of an moves through the so-called ‘ether’ that was thought to fill
interval into itself that was a real milestone. up space. There had been a number of notions of such an
Symbolic dynamics provides a rigorous way to under- ‘ether’, some kind of medium that fills up space and that is
stand global properties and constitutes an enormous help required for interactions to be propagated by. In the present
to characterise chaotic motion, as well as periodic motion, context, it is the ‘luminiferous ether’, the light-propagating
in dynamical systems. Many students of nonlinear dynamics ether, the discussion was concerned with. Earlier exper-
and chaos have learned the rudiments of symbolic dynam- iments throughout the nineteenth century had measured
ics to some extent, since basic ideas form part of the usual various properties of light relative to the Earth’s motion,
contents in many books. However, it is obvious that its all of which gave a negative result on effects that depend
abstract formulation has oftentimes been an obstacle for to first order on the velocity of the Earth. By the 1880s,