<p>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.</p>

Ubiquity : The New Science of Universal Patterns

Science & Math

Mark Buchanan

Physics

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Your God Is Too Safe

Multnomah Publishers

Most of us have had the experience of running into a friend of a friend far away from home - and feeling that the world is somehow smaller than it should be. We usually write off such unlikely encounters as coincidence, even though they seem to happen with uncanny frequency. According to some physicists, it turns out that this 'small-world' phenomenon is no coincidence at all. Rather, it is a manifestation of a hidden and powerful design that binds the world together. The Internet, the brain, power-grids and the global economy are all networks that seem to have evolved a 'small-world' geometry - with properties independent of the nature of the things themselves. SMALL WORLD argues that this underlying pattern may be one of nature's greatest design tricks, and the book shows us how scientists are putting this new insight to work.

Small World : Uncovering Nature's Hidden Networks

Biological Sciences

Phoenix Paperbacks

Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics

Business & Money

Economics

Bloomsbury Publishing

Contingency and pattern (Korean Edition)

Kim Heebong

CONTRACTOR

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Books by Mark Buchanan