How Nature Works

by Bak, Per

• ISBN13: 9780387987385
• ISBN10: 038798738X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-01
• Publisher: Copernicus Books

Summary

Many seemingly disparate aspects of the world, from the formation of the landscape to the process of evolution to the action of the nervous system to the behavior of the economy, all share a set of simple, easily described properties. These properties are all so similar, Per Bak writes, that "they make us wonder if they are all manifestations of a single principle. Can there be a Newton's law, an f=ma, of complex behavior?" In How Nature Works he argues that self-organized criticality, the spontaneous development of systems to a critical state, is the key to such a principle. While many theories have been proposed to describe individual complex systems, self-organized criticality is the first general theory of complex systems with a firm mathematical basis. How Nature Works, written by the discoverer of self-organized criticality, describes for general readers a concept of increasing importance. Few books offer such a compelling glimpse into the science of the future as this one.

Author Biography

Per Bak is currently a professor in the Department of Physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Complexity and Criticality	p. 1
The Discovery of Self-Organized Criticality	p. 33
The Sandpile Paradigm	p. 49
Real Sandpiles and Landscape Formation	p. 65
Earthquakes, Starquakes, and Solar Flares	p. 85
The "Game of Life": Complexity Is Criticality	p. 105
Is Life a Self-Organized Critical Phenomenon?	p. 113
Mass Extinctions and Punctuated Equilibria in a Simple Model of Evolution	p. 129
Theory of the Punctuated Equilibrium Model	p. 161
The Brain	p. 175
On Economics and Traffic Jams	p. 183
Bibliography	p. 199
Index	p. 207
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