Searching for Certainty: How Scientists Predict the Future

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This lively series of lectures on everyday systems (like weather forecasting and the stock market) that refuse to yield to predictability shakes the reputation of mathematics as the irresistible force of scientific exploration. Illustrations. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Casti earned much notice for his Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science ( LJ 6/15/89), and this new book is in something of the same mold. Here, he assesses current methods of forecasting and future prediction for the weather, evolutionary biology, the stock market, the outbreak of war, and mathematical proofs. His point is that an objective evaluation of the methods used to predict events should indicate how likely such predictions are to come true. His historical research is often interesting, and his knowledge of arcana can be encyclopedic. He can also lose even the most earnest reader in a thicket of formulae and statistical analysis, making this a difficult book to read, understand, and absorb. For informed laypersons or specialists.--Mark L. Shelton, Athens, Ohio