The last three chapters were very good - "Metaphor in Science", "How Ideas are Born", and "The Meaning of Science. One direct descendant is artificial intelligence, in the sense that work on spin glasses has been very important for a lot of developments in studying neural networks in the 1980s and 90s, and neural networks are the basis of modern artificial intelligence. When you have two simultaneous images of a flock seen from a different angle, it’s not easy to match the bird in the first image with the same bird in the second.

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.

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 . The most beautiful and profound irony is that he found multiple equilibria by pursuing multiple equilibria … through time. It was clear to us that this had to be done by physicists, because of the huge amount of data that had to be analysed.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. For this work, together with Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe, he won the Nobel prize in physics in 2021. Giorgio Parisi: ‘Trying to describe some sophisticated physics problem without formulae takes real effort. 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.In her novel The Waves , Virginia Woolf wrote about something similar occurring among a group of young friends: “The complexity of things become more close…What am I? It’s a bit like what happens on crowded buses, where frequently the crush is greatest near the doors, where passengers who have just got on accumulate, together with those who are about to get off and others still who want to continue their journey. 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.

In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and brings it into the real world. So trying to describe some complex and sophisticated physics problem without formulae takes real effort. You’re angled into your pinched seat, and your seatmate starts telling you stories, at best, of unknown grandchildren and, at worst, vaguely offensive opinions about women in the military or crime in Chicago. However, by this point, the author had proved himself a compelling teacher, and I wanted to be a good student.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. That would save a lot of time, but I would lose a lot of people because a formula that seems easy for me to read is harder for other people. In this enlightening book, Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work to show us how.

We had a meeting of academics at the G7 in Paris in 2019, and one thing that we were very worried about was weapons systems controlled by AI.Sometimes it takes years to develop them, and all it took was another physicist asking a pointed question. Giorgio Parisi has written a slim, flight-length primer on the ways that “scientists toil, doubt, succeed, and fail.