How Nature Works: the science of self-organized criticality 1st Edition by Per Bak (PDF)

Description

Self-organized criticality, the spontaneous development of systems to a critical state, is the first general theory of complex systems with a firm mathematical basis. This theory describes how many seemingly desperate aspects of the world, from stock market crashes to mass extinctions, avalanches to solar flares, all share a set of simple, easily described properties.”…a’must read’…Bak writes with such ease and lucidity, and his ideas are so intriguing…essential reading for those interested in complex systems…it will reward a sufficiently skeptical reader.” -NATURE”…presents the theory (self-organized criticality) in a form easily absorbed by the non-mathematically inclined reader.” -BOSTON BOOK REVIEW”I picture Bak as a kind of scientific musketeer; flamboyant, touchy, full of swagger and ready to join every fray… His book is written with panache. The style is brisk, the content stimulating. I recommend it as a bracing experience.” -NEW SCIENTIST

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review …[Bak’s] book is written with panache. The style is brisk, the content stimulating. — New Scientist…a must read…essential reading for those interested in complex systems. — Nature About the Author Per Bak is currently a professor in the Department of Physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Per Bak’s 1996 book “How Nature Works: the science of self-organized criticality” is a foundational work in the popularization of complexity, and is still widely read and cited over 20 years after its publication. It is engagingly written, interesting, and persuasive, suggesting that many if not all natural phenomena–from sandpiles to earthquakes, forest fires, extinction events, solar flares, and the human brain–share the characteristics of self-organized criticality. Bak claims that non-periodic catastrophic events, not gradual change, are the main drivers of these phenomena, and that the distribution of these catastrophes (called “avalanches” after his experimental and theoretical studies of sandpiles) follow a power law, reveal a fractal (self-similar) pattern in time and/or space, and form the “basis for emergent phenomena.” The idea is that an open, energy-dissipative system with slow energy inputs (like a sandpile with a slow drip of sand onto it) inevitably evolves over a long period of time to become critical, i.e. susceptible to sudden large avalanches. “If this picture is correct, then we must accept instability and catastrophes as inevitable in biology, history, and economics” (p.32).I agree that Bak’s work has identified an interesting paradigm that provides a theoretical description of certain classes of natural phenomena, but it really doesn’t EXPLAIN much in terms of causation. Bak uses as an illustration the fossil record of extinction events in the last 600 million years, which has many small extinction events and a few very large events. He claims, “Large catastrophic events occur as a consequence of the same dynamics that produces small ordinary everyday events. This observation runs counter to the usual way of thinking about large events, which looks for specific reasons (for instance, a falling meteorite causing the extinction of dinosaurs) to explain large cataclysmic events…Self-organized criticality can be viewed as the theoretical justification for catastrophism” (p.32). But wait a minute! Is he claiming that the meteorite impact was NOT the cause of dinosaur extinction? A huge meteorite crashing into the Caribbean could hardly be called a “small ordinary everyday event”! For the dinosaur extinction to be an example of a catastrophe resulting from a system organizing itself towards criticality one must expand the system to include the Asteroid belt and the Oort cloud and not just the planet Earth. Where does it end?Elsewhere in the book Bak claims that, because long-term records of temperature fluctuations follow a power law distribution, “the apparent increase in temperature might well be a statistical fluctuation rather than an indication of global warming generated by human activity” (p.22). Is the documented great increase in atmospheric CO2 irrelevant, and the atmosphere just happens to be poised for a spike in temperature like a critical sandpile? These kinds of claims for the causative power of SOC are not plausible to me. To explain “how nature works” requires more than a description of a long-term statistical pattern, intriguing though it is. Another objection is that, because self-organized critical systems must evolve for very long times to become critical, they necessarily spend a lot of time in sub-critical states, in which the small inputs do not have cascading catastrophic effects. How do we know whether or not most systems are in such transitional states?Over 20 years of research inspired by Bak’s ideas has been reviewed and critiqued recently by scientists largely sympathetic to the paradigm*. They provide a list of the necessary and sufficient conditions for self-organized criticality (SOC), including power law correlations, self-tuning to a continuous phase transition, non-linearity, and presence of “avalanches.” In conclusion they state, “There are few systems that display SOC in all its glory, but they do exist and they provide evidence that it works in precisely the way originally envisioned. SOC may be at work in some natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, solar flares and precipitation, but SOC is almost certainly not ubiquitous…it has provided the very fruitful paradigm for a much deeper understanding of the phenomena concerned, as researchers became aware of the distinct possibility that some very simple interactions on a microscopic scale carry over to and evolve across many different time and length scales, effectively providing the same basic physics in rescaled form across many scales” (p.38).I recommend the book, but please read it with critical skepticism…* Watkins, N.W., Pruessner, G., Chapman, S.C. et al. (2016) 25 Years of Self-organized Criticality: Concepts and Controversies. Space Sci Rev 198: 3-44.

⭐Per Bak, sadly now deceased, in How Nature Works wrote a book of considerable intellectual strength, but one quite accessible to the general reader. The basic notion of the book, that self-organized criticality underlies the world we live in and does so at multiple levels of organization, is clearly developed and supported with examples from geophysics, from evolution, from brain science, and the list goes on, and this is done with clarity and force.For me, personally, what is most effective about this book is the ability it gives thereader to make comparisons between such disparate natural events as earthquake occurrences and the occurrences of extinction events of differing magnitudes; they both obey simple power law relationships. Further, Bak is masterful in the way in which he approached an explanation of 1/f noise. Finally, the book is well referenced so that readers who are equipped with some math and scientific insight may pursue chosen concepts in more depth.In closing, for the reader who might be a bit math-phobic, Bak is one of those researcher/authors who empowers his readers to take risks, go beyond their perceived limitations, and enter a new world of knowledge and inquirey. If you are one of those, take a leap of faith, buy the book, and open your eyes and mind to a new world.With respect and gratitude to a great scientist, Per Bak,Tony Harper

⭐This book is a great attempt at finding some universality based on systems in a “critical” state, with departures from such state taking place in a manner that follows power laws. The sandpile is a great baby model for that.Some people are critical of Bak’s approach, some even suggesting that we may not get power laws in these “sandpile” effects, but something less scalable in the tails. The point is :so what? The man has vision.I looked at the reviews of this book. Clearly a few narrow-minded scientists do not seem to like it (many did not like Per Bak’s ego). But the book is remarkably intuitive and the presentation is so clear that he takes you by the hand. It is even entertaining. If you are looking to find flaws in his argument his pedagogy allows it (it is immediately obvious to us who dabble with simulations of these processes that you need an infinite sandpile to get a pure power law).Another problem. I have been ordering the book on Amazon for ages. Copernicus books does not respond to emails. I got my copy at the NYU library. Bak passed away 2 years ago and nobody seems to be pushing for his interest and that of us his readers (for used books to sell for 99 implies some demand). This convinces me NEVER to publish with Springer.

⭐I couldn’t let the previous reviewer’s comments stand without comment. I can’t believe the reviewer read the same book that I did. Bak’s treatment is detailed, clear, and balanced. When he is enthusiastic he let’s you know exactly why, leaving you free to make up your own mind. The fact that most of the studies he describes were published in Physical Review Letters might tell you something about their quality. The book provides wonderful examples of the role of models in science, much better than any I’ve come across in rather extensive search for materials for a course on the Nature of Science I help teach. I’m reading the book for the third time (not because it is difficult to read, but simply because it repays rereading) and I admire it more with each reading. If you want to understand models that display Self Organized Criticality, this book is without question the place to go.

⭐The impression that comes across from the book is that Per Bak had a wonderfully lucid view of the dynamics of complex processes, and an eye for where they appear in situations as widespread as sand piles, earthquakes, financial markets, evolution and the structure of the universe.This is an enthralling book. How much of the more speculative elements will stand the test of time remains to be seen, and no doubt some have been revised since it was written. However the core concept is both fascinating and enlightening: complex behaviour of dynamic systems is explained by very simple rules and the interesting stuff happens when the system is drawn to a critical state in which fluctuations of all sizes are possible. These huge collapses (earthquakes / financial crises) are not “different” from the behaviour seen the rest of the time, but are (surprisingly common) occurances driven by the same rules.In my opinion, a solid grasp of this is essential for everyone from structural engineers to financial regulators; it may be that it’s already widely known, but it would appear not to be universally acted upon.

⭐Loved the pace and the complexity offered by this book. It’s really great for people with some science and math fluency but no experience in self organized criticality etc…Definitely a book that can be read a multitude of times.

⭐Ein erhellendes Buch mit sehr überraschenden Ergebnissen bzw. Anwendungen eine Grundprinzips. Leider ein wenig “abgehoben” mit etwas zu wenig mathematischen Herleitungen oder Beispielen.Das Thema des Buches, die self-organized criticality” ist mittlerweile in der aktuellen Forschung angekommen, wird dort aber allzu formal und mathematisch abstrakt behandelt. Daher ist als Einführung das vorliegende Buch lesesenswert, wenn es auch vom Autor mit etwas missionarischem Eifer für sein Forschungsgebiet geschrieben wurde. Es sei Ihm verziehen, denn auch Benoit Mandelbrot “missionierte” für die Fraktale Geometrie, die seine Wortschöpfung “fraktal” als Namen trägt.

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⭐El libro es espectacular. Bak nos introduce no sólo en su trabajo sino en la forma de pensar de los que hacen la ciencia puntera hoy en día. a través de su propia experiencia describe como es posible construir un modelo sencillo y obtener resultados complejos al aplicarlo en varios campos científicos. El paradigma de la vaca esférica de radio R en su máximo esplendor.

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⭐Using simple language. The author presents a new and wide applicability issue. The book shows the occurrences of self-organized criticality in Nature: Earthquakes, Fjords of Norway, forming landscapes, mass extinctions and so on. The reader will change the way you see our planet.

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