Product Description

Is there a 'physics of society'? Ranging from Hobbes and Adam Smith to modern work on traffic flow and market trading, and across economics, sociology and psychology, Philip Ball shows how much we can understand of human behaviour when we cease to try to predict and analyse the behaviour of individuals and look to the impact of hundreds, thousands or millions of individual human decisions, whether in circumstances in which human beings co-operate or conflict, when their aggregate behaviour is constructive and when it is destructive. By perhaps Britain's leading young science writer, this is a deeply thought-provoking book, causing us to examine our own behaviour, whether in buying the new "Harry Potter" book, voting for a particular party or responding to the lures of advertisers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26359 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

The Guardian
Critical Mass fizzes with ideas and insights

Independent on Sunday
‘more than a book, this in an intellectual curiosity’

Glasgow Herald
‘lucid, accessible and engaging’

Customer Reviews

A very interesting book.
Critical Mass provides an overview and investigation into the study of human society and interactions using physics-based models.

The book gets off to a roaring start, beginning with exploring the models used throughout. Then it moves to looking at how they can be applied to crowds and other physical human interactions such as traffic flow. Philip Ball, I think, succeeds here most in showing how the physics-based models apply to real-life behaviour.

Where he least succeeds for me is in relation to economics but this is mostly because I find this particular subject dull and I've recently read Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and it's left me somewhat sceptical of making any sense of economics. Indeed Black Swan The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable makes a good (if cynical) companion book as it covers the role of chance occurences more fully.

Later sections on networks such as the internet and our social connectedness fare better. They don't contain much new information but they're very interesting nonetheless as the author has an engaging style.

All very interesting and well recommended.

Fun to read - Changes your perspective!
I really enjoyed this book, I just grabbed it at the airport because I needed something to read.
It must be hard, covering so many topics.
You may need a background in physics to understand the first few chapters, this is certainly not true for the rest.
For me the book contains a lot of new concepts on fields partly new to me, traffic planning, biology, economy, international politics.
The simple models on integration and game theory almost make me run to a computer to start modeling and programming (if I had time).

The philosophical references make it even more interesting!
I certainly would recommend it!
(unless you have a grade in all of the fields above)

Next time you're in a traffic jam, be sure to have it on the seat next to you ;-)

Hard Work, but worth making the effort
Like other reviewers, at times I found this really hard work to read - coming as I did from a non-science background. The first few chapters are necessarily tough, as they set a lot of the groundwork and understanding for the rest of the book. I recommend sticking with it, as reading this book offered me a different perspective on 'how things are' to many of the more arts-based ones I've tended to be more influenced by previously. If we're to understand the challenges society faces going forward, then it's important to make the effort and engage with this sort of thinking and rationale - even if I finished the book not entirely convinced by his central arguments.