Book Description

“Consistently surprising…The Logic of Miracles breaks new ground in the relationship of probability, fate, and the ability of human beings to behold them."—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human We live in a more turbulent world than we like to think. Yet the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world’s essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural order. Here, a renowned mathematician and psychologist explains how the wild and mild worlds (which he names Wildovia and Mildovia) coexist, and that different laws apply to each. Even if we live in an ultimately wild universe, he argues, we’re better off pretending that it obeys Mildovian laws. Doing so may amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy and create an island of predictability in a very rough sea. Perched on the ragged border between economics and complexity theory, the author proposes to extend the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call “miracles.” “It's hard to see how miracles and math fit together. But if you accept László Mérö's invitation, you will enter a world where miracles are normal and the predictable sits side-by-side with the unpredictable. Along the way, he unveils the mathematics of the stock market and explains, in a playful yet mathematically accurate way, the roots of market crashes and earthquakes, and why ‘black swans’ are not just calamities but opportunities.”—Albert-László Barabási, author of Linked