About the book
Per Bak presents self-organized criticality, the idea that systems develop on their own toward a critical state, as a general, mathematically grounded theory of complex systems. In this picture nature is never in balance but stays poised at that critical point, where anything may happen, though only within clearly defined statistical laws, which aims to explain why nature is complex rather than simple. Fractal structures and catastrophic events are among the patterns it covers, with applications from earthquakes, avalanches and solar flares to pulsars, black holes, mass extinctions and stock market crashes. Catastrophes, on this view, can happen without any outside cause. Bak and his colleagues proposed the idea in 1987, and this was the first book on it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb praised it as a serious attempt to find universal behavior in systems at a critical state, with departures following power laws, and called the sandpile a good starter model.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
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.
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