Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another

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Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 444 ratings · 52 reviews

Are there any "laws of nature" that influence the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves? In the seventeenth century, tired of the civil war ravaging England, Thomas Hobbes decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His approach was based not on utopian wishful thinking but rather on Galileo's mechanics to construct...more

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Published January 1st 2004 by Farrar Straus Giroux (first published July 17th 2003)

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Jun 01, 2008 Aram rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(I finished this book a few months ago, so it's not totally fresh in my mind. But I see it on Ilya's to-read list, so thought I should warn him before it's too late.)

I'm very mixed about this book. It discusses the application of statistical physics and computer simulations to problems of social science, like traffic jams, segregation, economic behavior, etc. The book stays close to the academic research, and so reads less like a management book than, say The Tipping Point.

Its strengths are the...more (I finished this book a few months ago, so it's not totally fresh in my mind. But I see it on Ilya's to-read list, so thought I should warn him before it's too late.)

I'm very mixed about this book. It discusses the application of statistical physics and computer simulations to problems of social science, like traffic jams, segregation, economic behavior, etc. The book stays close to the academic research, and so reads less like a management book than, say The Tipping Point.

Its strengths are the strengths of the underlying research. Social sciences don't always model interactions quite right and physics and agent-based computer simulations sometimes have useful things to say. A lot of social science seems stuck with mean-field models (the physics approximation in which one atom responds to the average magnetic field of all the other atoms in the sample, as opposed to a more realistic model where neighbors are more strongly coupled than distant atoms) and incorporating network effects is an important new development.

But the research also has weaknesses and the biggest flaw of the book is the credulous approach it takes towards the research it covers. Let's say there's some simulation based on a toy model that reproduces behavior reminiscent of the business cycle, or whatever. Yes, that's interesting, but it doesn't mean we now know how the business cycle works! Similarly with power laws. At first people were really excited about them (and this book echoes some of that excitement when it talks about 'self-organized criticality' and 'small-world networks' and other stuff I've forgotten), but as the new theory found itself, like string theory, unable to generate useful predictions, skepticism grew. Here is a negative but optimistic recent editorial in the journal Internet Mathematics that gives some perspective.

And so I think the weaknesses of the research become the weaknesses of the book. This is especially since the weakness of a line of research is often the most interesting place to investigate, either so the problem can be fixed or so we can decide to abandon the line of research. The book would have done well to ask social scientists who are critical of econophysics to comment, and then to ask the physicists to reply. Instead, it doesn't mention the fact that a lot of this physics-based social science work is pretty marginal, and that it's ignored not only because economists don't know physics. For an example of what a debate about model validity looks like within economics, see the papers by Rodrik and Banerjee from this recent conference.

Anyway, to sum up, this book did a good job of making me think. Unfortunately, many of the thoughts were hostile.(less)

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Jun 23, 2010 Xing rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Critical Mass brings together a collection of interesting studies on social statistics, and places them in the context of economic and political history.

Naturally, the examples picked for the book are ones which apply broadly to a range of phenomena, and are fairly pared-down, made accessible to the non-specialist reader. I was impressed at how well these case studies were integrated into the text, and liked that he pointed out their limitations and underlying assumptions, and overall simplicit...more

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May 18, 2010 Ugh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Here Ball describes how various statistical models from physics can be used to investigate different sociological areas of interest - from crowd flow and the growth of cities to the way that countries aligned themselves in the run-up to WWII and the wisdom or otherwise of Mutually Assured Destruction. "How intriguing!", you might be thinking, as I did when I first found the book, but if I may shamelessly nab Ball's theme for a moment, I should caution that I did find my level of interest peaking...more Here Ball describes how various statistical models from physics can be used to investigate different sociological areas of interest - from crowd flow and the growth of cities to the way that countries aligned themselves in the run-up to WWII and the wisdom or otherwise of Mutually Assured Destruction. "How intriguing!", you might be thinking, as I did when I first found the book, but if I may shamelessly nab Ball's theme for a moment, I should caution that I did find my level of interest peaking and falling - a little like a sine wave - around the three-star mark throughout the course of the book, which is a 600-page small monster of a tome. Most fascinating for me were the historical contexts into which these modelling attempts are placed, and the extent to which what seem like modern concerns can be brightly illuminated by the theories of our forebears - Ball incorporates an enormous number of important figures and scientific or philosophical milestones (often quoting the former), but never in a way that feels forced or show-offy; rather, you simply come to realise that these are issues that have been pondered for centuries in one form or another, and that the current states of affairs are not necessarily either inevitable or ideal. Where my attention faltered was during the lengthy descriptions of the models' specifics - I've a fairly scientific background, but after the first 150 pages or so I started skipping over most of the figures, and was even tempted at times to do the same with entire pages of text, although I advise you not to skim-read, as the periodicity of my wave of interest was pretty short - that is, often when I thought I was mired deep in the middle of a lengthy trough of boredom, some interesting tid-bit was waiting just around the corner to nudge me gently back up onto another peak of reading pleasure.

I did wonder at times whether some of the topic and model combinations weren't a similie too far, as sometimes the models seemed to reveal little that wasn't obvious, and at other times they seemed to be barely relevant. But part of my doubt may stem from my inability to concentrate during some of the drier passages, so I'll leave it to other, more qualified reviewers to judge Ball on that.

Overall, this is a dense but generally very readable and informative book that will leave you considerably more knowledgeable but will probably also make you realise just how much smarter than you some people are - Philip Ball included!

Favourite quotes: "...without change there is nothing to be said."

"...the aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people."

(less)

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Nov 10, 2011 Eric Rautenbach rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Philip Ball, in Critical Mass, explores the possibility of systems always following specific patterns, even to the point where an outcome can be accurately predicted. Such hypotheses can be adequately proven in mathematical models or in chemical reaction up to the point where it becomes an accepted theorem or fact. In this case I found that Philip Ball fails to present sufficient evidence to bring his ideas any further than just being unproven hypotheses.

The message I got from this book is that...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Rhoda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A discussion of non-equilibrium phenomena and the characteristics of systems composed of large numbers of interacting 'agents'; based on findings in physics and physical chemistry. Physical phenomena reveal that characteristic properties emerge from complex systems that can be accurately modeled with tools of modern mathematics; these same mathematical tools also seem to model selected aspects of human society when our actions are considered in large aggregates. This is a math-lite discussion, s...more

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Jan 30, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: physics, sociology, philosophy, politics, nonfiction

This book is about applying the methods of physics and mathematics to sociology. There are no equations in this book, and it is easy to follow--but the discussion is unnecessarily verbose as a result. Some equations could have kept the discussion more concise, and perhaps easier to understand, also.

The book introduces some of the concepts of statistical thermodynamics and phase transitions. The most interesting aspect of this book is the analogies between many-particle interactions and the "tipp...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

I would not like this book assigned to me as a textbook, either for physics nor sociology, though it does attempt to use the former as an explanation, somehow, of the latter. It's not that I can't follow it, just that it spends a lot of time- too much- thickly explaining the theories and conclusions of the author. Halfway through I am about to give up, since it's taken at least that long to ascertain its purpose! Boring. I guess if you were excited by quantum mechanics etc it might have an appea...more

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Nov 25, 2008 Jim rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one

This one didn't do anything for me. I read it because Bill Bryson gave it a nice endorsment on the cover of the book, but it didn't deliver my hopes. It is parts sociology, physics, statistics, chemistry, mathmatics, philosophy, history, biography, and some other fields too. The sub title is "One Thing Leads to Another" but to it lead to a disjointed mish-mash that seemed a waste of time. So i skimmed through most of it looking for the point where it settled down and made some sense to me. But i...more

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Dec 26, 2010 BOB rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: popular-physics

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 blo...more 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".

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.(less)

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May 01, 2010 Jerzy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cog-sci-and-psych, economics

A physics-inspired science of society still seems a bit loopy and unlikely to pan out, at least as a cohesive theory... but this book does collect a bunch of interesting approaches from physics, engineering, economics, computer modeling, math, sociology, etc. Some of it would have been super helpful a year earlier when I was still working in a transportation research lab.

Other interesting bits include computer simulation experiments that, while proving nothing, can at least give some indication...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Will rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

This book is a gem. Covering topics from history, physics, economics, chemistry, the internet, ethics, &c. Ball follows one idea throughout all of these subjects: can physical laws be translated into social laws. He also wants to know if is it worth our while not just to formulate them but to draw not only practical but also ethical decisions from the information we gain.

He first reduces free will to the most basic set of variables and turns humans into automata and shows us how individual a...more

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Aug 30, 2008 Bob rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned-for-now

I wanted to like this book. I like the premise. And it started out okay. I never knew that there were states of pressure/temperature where matter has an equal chance of branching into either liquid or gas, or liquid or solid. Several chapters kept harping on this same theme. There are actually two states of change, critical states and some other name I don't remember (too bad "states" doesn't appear in the Index, nor "critical", so good luck trying to look it up.) There's some kind of difference...more I wanted to like this book. I like the premise. And it started out okay. I never knew that there were states of pressure/temperature where matter has an equal chance of branching into either liquid or gas, or liquid or solid. Several chapters kept harping on this same theme. There are actually two states of change, critical states and some other name I don't remember (too bad "states" doesn't appear in the Index, nor "critical", so good luck trying to look it up.) There's some kind of difference between them: in one the change is instant, one has a steep slope as the change occurs.

The first chapters cover things like how paths form in gardens, and how car driver behavior varies in normal and congested conditions. The driving chapter was probably the most interesting one for me, since it concerns one of my daily activities. But then the book moves into economics, the stock market and corporations. It's as if the book decided that maybe it should be a business book; a kind of In Search of Excellence from the physics angle. Slogging through a series of chapters on these subjects, with nothing that directly relates to my daily life, began to get tedious.

The last straw for me was the chapter named "Join the Club" which centers on the use of energy landscaping graphs to hindcast why alliances have happened in the past-- among businesses (business again!) and countries in WWII. The author admits that the modeling was simplified, and that data derived most recently to the events being hindcasted resulted in the most accurate hindcasting (which is essentially saying the closer to an event happening that you look toward the event, the more likely you'll know what's going to happen, which is kinda tautological.) As I read the chapter I got the feeling I was witnessing the creation of new predictions of Nostradamus to hindcast past events we already know about. I mean, maybe there is some statistical truth to this, but what about the psychological (in)validity of conjuring a method to discover what's already known? Is there no concept of a double-blind test for judging the validity of statisical hindcasting? More interesting to me would be to know predictions made from the model a few years ago and how accurately they predicted what's unfolded since then.

So, at this point I would say the book is definitely a mass, but I don't know how critical it is to my interests.(less)

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Sep 26, 2011 Ran Dewcastle is currently reading it · review of another edition

Considering so far the book has gone on at length about the history and evolution of statistics, physics and physical statistics (My least favourite subjects), and the attempts at reconciliation of physical laws and statistical probabilities with the dynamics of society, I've actually quite enjoyed it. It is interesting, but it demands a lot of focus as the information contained on a page by page basis, although fluid in the text and easy to follow, is quite substantial.

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Nov 12, 2012 Sai Prasanna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Critical Mass is one book which focuses on the application of statistics on social phenomena,encompassing an eclectic mix of examples to show how the law of large numbers could be applied to predict mass behavior.Philip Ball's exposition on Phase Transitions in the mathematical modelling of traffic is a must read.However, the author lays stress only on the successes of such modelling attempts.For novice readers like me who have just started to dig into statistics, a balanced treatise with the fa...more

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Sep 16, 2009 Antonio rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An exciting reading. Introduces the socio-physics science in a very detailed way. Ball describes the relevant concepts from physics to explain how some social phenomena may be explained as if those were pure physical entities. At the end, it gives enough evidence that, even free will and intelligence, human social phenomena show features very similar to those processes and phenomena in pure physics.

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Feb 05, 2013 Agile Kindergarten rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The scientists among us have attempted to relate the natural laws of physics to social interactions for hundreds of years. We may not have succeeded, and we may never succeed. However, the attempts change us for the better in the same way the alchemist's efforts to convert lead into gold, transformed them from greedy men into patient and disciplined seekers of truth. Heavy going - but worth it!

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Dec 19, 2012 Andrea Walker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, philosophy, science

I've always been interested in statistics. I like to see how many different ways the same details can be interpreted. I like the idea of making models that show how things work - particularly complex things that you need a computer to model. But this book actually makes it interesting. It takes statistics (specifically statistical physics and associated models) and applies it to everyday life. Of course things are still open to interpretation, and the author is very clear about that, but the imp...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Bas Kreuger rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ball has written an interesting book, not always very accessible, about science, sociology and human behaviour. It is curious to read how traffic, economics and even humans sometimes behave like gasses! His text can be very technical and dense and must now and then be skipped over by lesser mortals, but is mostly very intruiging

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Dec 15, 2010 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Starts with a fairly clear explanation of some statistical physics, then analyses a lot of human behaviour (from walking around, to what forms of government can be stable, with a bit on why neoclassical economics tends to be so badly wrong). I found it really interesting, especially towards the end.

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May 05, 2010 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Philip Ball uses Thomas Hobbes's theory of mechanistic political philosophy and shows how Adam Smith, Kant, Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill expanded on Hobbes's scientific but anti-utopian theories of government and society. Mr. Ball notes a return to such a scientific view of the social sciences and he examines the application of physical laws to economics and politics.

However, it is strange to see how he makes the two mostly unrelated concepts seem very related. For example, how a city grow...more

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Oct 22, 2009 Meredith Payne marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: don-t-own

This is more of a book that i wish i had read already but probably never will read because it's huge and over my head, but I am putting it on this list anyway. If anyone else would like to read it and then give me a report on what it says, that would be great, thanks.

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Feb 16, 2013 Jane Ostler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Absolutely adored this book. As a failure at maths at primary school, made to feel hopeless, and still finding mental arithmatic a challenge, to be able to visualise the big concepts which really affect people's daily lives, this book changed mine!

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Jul 09, 2012 Chico rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the one book I think anyone working on a college degree should read. Changes the way you view the world instantly. You'll never view a flock of birds or a school of fish the same. Few challenging reads are actually worth it.

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Oct 20, 2012 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bridging the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences is not an easy proposition. Ball gives a reasonable attempt, drawing from mathematical models in physics, chemistry and biology to explain aggregate human behavior. While I like his logic, part of me wants to rebel against what appears to be too pat an explanation for complex behavior. His explanations why collective behavior are not the sum of aggregate behavior are compelling. The book drags in places where he seems to labor a little too hard to prove hi...more

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Jan 07, 2008 Nathan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fact

"Winner of the Aventis Prize for Science Books". It begins with a great romp through the discoveries of how gases, liquids, and solids work, and (I'm about half-way through) arrives at instantaneous phase changes (e.g., gas to liquid) as a model for complex human behaviours. Applying physics to societies and human behaviours, in other words.

Interesting, and worth reading to learn a little more about the math and science. Unsure as yet of the validity of the application to people, however. Some l...more

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Jun 06, 2010 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Something of a slow start, but then, I was trying to read it on a plane. The last 150 pages were the payoff. Very interesting way of considering human behavior.

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Oct 08, 2008 Nathan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Nonsexy physicists who yearn to be sexy, Sociologists, Socialists, Socrates

A good book, but a heavy read. I find myself comparing situations to physical states and critical points a lot now.

But what's most perplexing is a review of the book on the back cover by Elissa Schappell from Vanity Fair: "Philip Ball makes physics sexy again in Critical Mass."

What? I'm not sure if Elissa and I read the same book because:

A) The physics in this book was not sexy,
B) In fact, I don't think physics was ever sexy, and
C) Assuming physics was ever sexy, not even Justin Timberlake coul...more

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Jan 09, 2008 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I know it is not good to review a book you are in the middle of, but who says you can't :-) What I am enjoying about this book is understanding the substructure of mass behavior. So far it has allowed me to gain a grip on how things can be predetermined on the one hand (the predictability of mass behavior), yet allow for unique and creative individuality within those bounds (free will). True, it is not your fast read "Romance Novel" with a luscious, enticing bare chested Fabian on the front - bu...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Jussi Mononen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A mash-up of sociology and physics. Somewhat heavy going at times (understanding of basic physics is helpful), but insightful and fascinating.

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Apr 03, 2012 Phil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometimes interesting but generally disorganized history of applying physics to society and where society lines up with physics.

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About Philip Ball

Philip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It e...more

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