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“A long but interesting exploration of emergent behavior.”
Evil Genius wrote this review Sunday, March 11, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“How are we (readers) affected by Ball's book ? Such question (although not this particular one) is what the book addresses. From how bacterial colonies form and financial markets crash to how traffic evolves and human behavior is affected by its surrounding, Ball passes over countless of historical facts & scientific details (explained in plain English) showing how many scientists, sociologists, economists & others (even physicists) have been, for ages trying to put down the building blocks (even without a prior knowledge) of a field which is now referred to as "Social Physics".
BOB wrote this review Thursday, June 3, 2010. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
One might wonder what social physics aims at. Well, its is not a science yet, but lots of progress has been made over the centuries by countless of investigators (as early as 1600 during which Thomas Hobbes is the key figure in Ball's book) if I may call them so, studying how humans interact (and thus are affected by external & internal influences) & are connected ( through the daily social network or the digital network), companies rise, fall & merge, countries form allies & wage wars, how phase transitions (p.119) changes the behavior of a system or its state & countless of other studies made over the centuries. Through such examples, Ball gives a detailed description of how life in general revolves around his title: Critical Mass. By critical mass, one understands a threshold beyond which the state of a system is abruptly changed. In other words, the critical mass is technically a "phase transition". Of course the book doesn't aim at describing phase transition but rather it shows how many of the studies included in the book & many other examples in daily life abide to some kind of phase transition or critical (point) mass. Phase transitions are often also called critical points. Critical points can be found nearly every where in physics.
Critical Mass is not a book that belongs to any particular category by itself, but rather dwells into sociology, psychology, physics & statistical physics, mathematics & fractals, chaos & order, game theory & the prisoner's dilemma & many others.
It is not just a good read, but one with a great ending [Epilogue]. It will surely expand your vocabulary & lubricate the traditional thinkers' mind & it's "linear thinking" or thought.”
“Surprising insights into the behavior of groups of people as they produce cities, financial markets, traffic, social networks, and the rest. Who would have thought that we could be so predictable? Maybe only a physicist could love the parallels that he draws to gas/liquid phase changes, and to thermodynamic critical points, but it seems to work dad-gum it.”
Glen R wrote this review Wednesday, February 17, 2010. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“The author once worked on the physics of phase changes in materials, and the whole point of the book is that the same math can be used to model human behavior. However, a bit of insight into highway traffic flows doesn't make a comprehensive mathematical model for solving all human problems. There are definitely some interesting computer research results mentioned, but they are much too far between, with a great lot of the book filling in with an excited but very muddled attempt to tie these ideas together into something comprehensive or important. Where "Chaos" or "Linked" described real math and science research converging to create a new field, "Critical Mass" merely lumps together some computer science papers and hopes you can follow that this is the beginning of solving all human problems through math. Not hardly.”
Matt Bayly wrote this review Tuesday, January 15, 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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