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Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature. Its footprints are virtually everywhere - in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art. Wherever we look, the world is modelled on a simple template: like a steep pile of sand, it is poised on the brink of instability, with avalanches - in events, ideas or whatever - following a universal pattern of change. This remarkable discovery heralds what Mark Buchanan calls the new science of ‘ubiquity', a science whose secret lies in the stuff of the everyday world. Combining literary flair with scientific rigour, this enthralling book documents the coming revolution by telling the story of the researchers' exploration of the law, their ingenious work and unexpected insights. Mark Buchanan reveals how the principle of ubiquity will help us to manage, control and predict the future. More controversially, he claims that it may well contain the beginnings of a mathematics of cultural and historical change. Every decade sees a major scientific breakthrough that has implications that go way beyond science. ‘Ubiquity' is one of them. This book, the world's first on the topic, will change how we think about the world and our place in it. Chaos Disorder from order. Complexity Complexity from simplicity. UBIQUITY World has a natural ‘rhythm': there is a mysterious archetypal organisation that works in the world at all levels and which gives rise to a universal pattern of change - in groups of people, things or ideas.
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Is it possible that seemingly unrelated cataclysms, both natural and human, all happen for one reason? In this groundbreaking book of popular science, critically acclaimed journalist Mark Buchanan tells the story of the serendipitous discovery of a new law of nature -- the law of universality -- and how it reveals the stunningly simple cause of some of the world's upheavals. From humble beginnings studying the physics of sandpiles, scientists have learned that many things in our world ? the earth's crust, cars on a highway, and even the tightly woven networks of human society -- have a natural tendency to organize themselves into what's called the "critical state". Packed with stories about real-life catastrophes such as the huge earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in 1995 with no warning, the stock market crash of 1987, and the outbreak of World War I, Ubiquity is a fascinating glimpse into an emerging scientific understanding of the fundamental instability of our world.
--This text refers to the
Digital
edition.
Ubiquity
Ubiquity,Mark Buchanan,Weidenfeld & Nicolson,0297643762,Science/Mathematics,Popular science
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