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: #49016 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

Philip Ball's Masterpiece
Yes, without a doubt, Philip Ball's greatest book to date. He is probably better known among scientists than laypersons as he was for a long time editor at Nature one of the worlds top multi-disciplinary science journals. He has a degree in chemistry and a doctorate in physics but he seems to know a great deal more, when he mentions literature he sounds like an english professor but enough about the man - what about his book?

The joy of Ball's erudition is that he can speak intelligently on any subject which must have been useful at Nature and is essential when he tackles popular science books such as this. His books are not for the lazy but curious person, to get joy out of Ball's books you must be prepared to think hard, concentrate a little and then the rewards will come. In this book, Ball discusses the startling results that physicists have had when applying physics to social phenomena - war, business, traffic. People are particles is a common theme. Obviously classical physics or even quantum phenomena are not going to predict a single persons actions, but what about a million? As it turns out there are parallels which we run in to again and again. One fascinating analogy - and it is more than just analogy really, thats the whole point - is how traffic slowing to a jam is much like water freezing. Phase changes and critical points come up repeatedly. Reading this book was absolutely fascinating. I looked forward to my bus rides to work so I'd have another chance to read some more.

The diagrams ease comprehension and the writing is lucid and entertaining throughout. There is even some dry humour which I found refreshing. I'm not sure I can praise this book highly enough, I've read popular science, and many academic titles and this is probably the one I've enjoyed most - it is one of those books that will make you look at everything differently.

Five stars without a doubt. A stimulating, exciting, fascinating read. 1st rate popular science, 1st rate writing.

People as particles
I found this book incredibly thought provoking. It would have been much quicker to read in fact if I hadn't been constantly writing down ideas that occured to me as I delved into its chapters.

It covers an enormous amount of ground and is, mostly, very readable despite sometimes covering a whirlwind of several hundred years of theory.

The main gist of the book is applying physics theories to human social interaction (be it in crowds, queues, crime, traffic, war, politics, markets, towns, businesses etc). It highlights how certain signature patterns seem to turn up time and time again in all these disparate theatres of human life.

It covers the familiar "bell curves" of probability theory but it was most interesting (to me) when discussing phase changes - for example how a liquid line of traffic suddenly morphs into a solid because one car (particle) brakes too fast and the knock on effects this has.

I'd strongly recommend this book as I think it's given me a better understanding of how certain types of change happen. Now I know why you wait ages for a bus and then three turn up at once.

Science plus politics equals dullsville
This is a rare, book indeed - one that I couldn't finish! In the last thirty years, I have failed with only perhaps ten books, and this is one of them. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the opening few chapters are an extremely dull and mainly pointless diversion into phase transitions. Ball is concerned with making a point about masses of humans behaving like particles but frankly, even if we do, we don't need pages and pages of O Level physics tedium to describe what is happening in trafiic jams and the markets.

Second, the writing, whilst competent, is dry and dusty in the extreme. I found myself dozing off or my mind wandering much of the time, despite the fact that once it gets going, there are some intresting nuggets to be gleaned. But Ball has made a thick book out of a few points of interest, and that means lots of history of science and lots of references.

Third, Ball cannot keep his rather naive leftish political views out of the argument. If I want politics, I'll read/buy politics. This is supposed to be science though, and bending the story to meet some wishy-washy view of the world is not enlightening. The section on markets is terribly ill-informed and adds almost nothing to what is already known. Ball also makes the common mistake of using US stock markets as a proxy for the capitalist system, which leads to some strained comparisons and conclusions.

There are far more interesting books out there that deal with some of the issues Ball raises. Indeed, The Wisdom of Crowds uses some of the same examples and pieces of data to make more plausible and insightful theories about human behaviour. All in all, impossible to recommend.