Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another

by Philip Ball

Book Overview

Are there any "laws of nature" that influence the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves? In the seventeenth century, tired of the civil war ravaging England, Thomas Hobbes decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His approach was based not on utopian wishful thinking but rather on Galileo's mechanics to construct a theory of government from first principles. His solution is unappealing to...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374281254
• ISBN13: 9780374281250
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 520 Pages
• Weight: 1.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview of social systems as physical models

I would like to say that this book is the basis for Asimov's "psychohistory". It isn't, but it is a great collection of social systems and ideas presented as physical and mathematical models. Starting with simple phyiscal models such as spin glasses and ending with game theory, this book is a treasure of lucid explanations about how these models apply to the system being modeled and their limitations. I found this a very interesting read and I appreciated that the author does not breathlessly hype the models, but explains the reasoning behind each and details the results, where they work and sometimes where they fail.

Still reading it... do not let the poilitical physics misguide you

My Profile 43 yo Mechanical Engineer.. beginner enterpreneur First I am only in chapter 6, so I will revisit this review and edit accordingly. As an admirer of the style of Dr. Ball's way of making chemistry accesible to everyone (specially me).. I was just curious by the comments and the approach of this new book, so when I saw the price was right I bought my used copy..just started some days ago and wow!! talk about a tour d force! I went back to my collegue years to remeber the classical political theorist and Hobbes.. just when I thought it was going to be a lecture in political theory, we are taken ino the realms of thermodymamics and statistical physics as models to be used for political physics..but I have not reach that part already, what I think its that this book is a must as a way to teach thermodynamics!!! So I must admitt I am kind of slow to learn, but if the principles and scopes of thermo were explained as in Critical Mass, then universities would at least be true to the root of word universal.. and that in those times men of science were holistics in their endevours and connected everything in their theories.. if that was good or not let us judge by history.. but at least we were not surrounded by specialist in their ivory towers.. getting back at the book, if thermodynamics is a dry subject be prepared to be enlighten, wow! I even dusted out my "Thermodynamics, Kinetic Theory , and Statistical Thermodynamics" by Sears-Salinger ad began to see the light on the chapters on phase transitions.. in a way, I felt like if the fear of having to hear the axioms and descriptions was shedded off by Dr. Balls's explanations.. do not believe me? see if it happens too. Again, Im in chapter 6, so there is a lot to see, but only for the thermodymaics insight the book is worth its weight in gold

Fascinating thinking in the overlap zone between our physical and our social universe.

Philip Ball describes his interest as "social physics" and that's a pretty apt description for a volume that examines the parallels between physical laws and the way our society operates. Such chemical phenomena as Phase Transitions (think of water suddenly reforming into ice...or steam) are akin to the way societal change can suddenly emerge: the massive and sudden adoption of the internet around 1995-1997 for example. This book is wonderful, and Ball does us a real favour by weaving together various schools - from physics to history to sociology and economics to illustrate his argument from many stimulating angles. Some of the thoughts here are quite gigantic, the effect is a little like turning a kaleidoscope and suddenly seeing an elegant, perfect pattern emerging from the chaos. The book isn't light reading though Ball has a gift for explaining big ideas in reasonably simple though not simplistic terms. But a warning: I'm somebody who reads in bed, and each night with this book I had trouble getting to sleep: the ideas and the writing are practically caffeinated! I'd actually recommend making a few notes as you go. In the past few weeks I've been dipping back frequently into the 640pp to re-read some of the really big ideas that are influencing my own social research work. Looks like I need to read Critical Mass once more. Its something I look forward to. Try also Duncan Watts "Six Degrees" which covers similar territory (network theory especially) and John Gribbin's "Deep Simplicity" a recent publication that also deals with emergence and the relationship between physics and society. This is fascinating territory and Ball, who won a science writing prize for this volume, deserves our attention.

Popular science at its best

Books about complexity and self-organization might be a dime a dozen, but this book by Philip Ball is unique. Underneath its popular style is a serious analysis of the science that underlies the concepts of complexity and collective dynamic phenomena. The analysis of specific examples of self-organizing systems (e.g., traffic models) is quite professional, with good referencing of the original literature. At the same time, the writing is clear and understandable to a non-specialist, and the examples given in the book will stimulate the interest of most readers. Another strength of this book is its historical approach; the author shows how the dynamic concepts evolved from 19-th century thermodynamics, to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, to the science of non-integrable dynamic systems. I really enjoyed reading it.

An excellent historical analysis of group interaction

This book is an excellent historical look at how scientists and social scientists have attempted to measure,analyze and discuss the effects and causes of group interactions,be they the interactions of atomic particles or speculators operating on the New York stock exchange.The author provides a superb overview of herd effects,cascades, and other types of crowd effects,as well as a good discussion of how economists have attempted to model the interactive effects of crowd behavior.Readers who are interested in this topic will find a much more detailed discussion in"The Wisdom of Crowds",by J Surowiecki(2004).John Maynard Keynes and Benoit Mandelbrot are both given appropriate recognition for their pathbreaking contributions in this area.Ball recognizes,as did Keynes and Boltzmann before him,the faddish nature of much of the social sciences , economics in particular ,in attempting to mimic mathematical physics in its approach to the use of formal mathematical methods.In many cases this leads to fads which emphasize the mere use of the technique,irrespective of any quantifiable scientific results.Ball points out that the overuse of the normal(Gaussian)probability distribution among economists is an attempt to obtain the self ordering and equilibrating structure of gas particle models within the human domain even if there is no empirical support for such a distribution.Here both Pareto,Zipf,and Mandelbrot receive credit.