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At the end of 2006 I read Critical Mass by Philip Ball. It’s an award winning book (that has tons of reviews online) about how the tools of the science of physics have been used to look at human systems. I was a biology major in college and have always loved science and the scientific method. Ball tells a fascinating history of how science has been looking at “non-scientific” questions of human behavior for centuries.

Critical Mass was a riveting read. Fascinating work has been done in studying the economy with statistical-physics-based tools. Turns out the economy is complex. But the most interesting part of Critical Mass is how research has been looking into what that complexity looks like.

Economists have been talking about the business cycle just about as long as capitalism has been around. It’s the periodic up and down of the economy–boom and bust. The word cycle is pretty disingenuous–no one has been able to identify any pattern in the ups and downs. There is no way to predict what the economy will do tomorrow, and there is also no way to predict the size of change from day to day. But it’s not random, either. Turns out the economy appears to be in “self-organized criticality”. It is stable, but continually on the edge of major change. It appears to be like a pile of sand with new sand grains dropping on to it. Will the next sand grain add gently to the pile or cause an avalanche of thousands or millions of grains? It’s impossible to tell.

Self-organized criticality is a fascinating concept that’s being seen all over nature and society. It explains why things can seem incredibly boring and then change overnight, only to become boring again.

Another cool point in Critical Mass is that these complex systems which are impossible to predict can be modeled in a computer. Researchers have been able to create computer models that result in these self-organized critical systems. These models aren’t the real world, but they look like the real world. More amazing is that these crazy, unpredictable, real-world-looking systems can be faked with just a few simple rules. Turns out it may be that the most complex social interactions and intractable problems really arise from just a few rules of human behavior. Those rules may be understandable, and that could help us better understand the interactions we see.

I found the book changed the way I view the world and think about social interactions and systems. Plus I really love well-written science books. Telling a technical story in a compelling way is hard to do and watching a master like Ball is a joy. For similar mastery of the genre also check out John McFee and my favorite science book ever, Bascom’s out of print Waves and Beaches.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under Books, Civics, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.