How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality

How Nature works is a fascinating book. I first heard of the late Per Bak and his sandpile theories when I a year ago or so read an article by Koubatis and Schönberger (1995) on Risk management of complex critical systems. At that time I had just discovered the International Journal of Critical Infrastructure, and I was perusing their archives for articles I could use in my research on transportation vulnerability. Koubatis and Schönberger actually consider Per Bak's "sandpile" model to be as relevant to business and society as Adam Smith's legendary "invisible hand". When I read that I was simply compelled to investigate more. I looked up Per Bak on Wikipedia and was intrigued by his theories, but I put it aside as not particularly relevant to me at that time. Currently I am writing a book chapter on risks in Virtual Enterprise Networks (VENs), as described by Ken Thompson in The Networked Enterprise : Competing for the Future Through Virtual Enterprise Networks and it was as a background for VENs that Per Bak came into my mind again. A VEN is a collection of loosely coupled businesses, self-organized and more efficient than traditional businesses, and it's the self-organizing concept that I needed to understand more about. How nature works provided me with that understanding. Chapter 11 on economics was particularly helpful here. Actually, every economist should read that chapter. It has certainly widened my horizon. Reference: Koubatis, A., & Schönberger, J. Y. (1995). Risk management of complex critical systems. International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 1(2/3), 195-215.

This is both a wonderful book and an awful one with two interleaved narratives. I've read the book cover to cover and some of the key chapters several times over. I've also replicated some of the key simulation results on a personal computer. Much to the credit of Per Bak's clear explanations designed to simplify he eminently succeeds at his task of making his point: complexity in nature can be simple to understand. Bak points out the existence of power laws in self-organized critical systems occurring in nature and he gives the reader the ability to model them using simple numerical methods. We could call them "back of the envelope calculations" if the were analytic. All of this he manages to do without the need for the reader ever to go to the published literature. In the process of doing that, he does not completely strip off the plausibility of the models. In some sense it is quite a tour de force. So what could be awful about such a wonderful book? It would be a great world if those who make significant advances in science were magnanimous. While one narrative in Per Bak's book is all about self-organized criticality, the "other" narrative comes out all but too self-serving. Per Bak relishes in his moment in the limelight of science as he uses every bit of it as a platform to offer judgmental and patronizing opinions about every other field of science (including his own physics) and many colleagues he's worked with or benefited from the insight of... When convenient, reductionism is good but when not convenient, reductionism is vile. Big Science is mindless, except perhaps for this or perhaps for that... A lot of this "other narrative" really sounds like small talk around the departmental coffee pot with a few smirks and some wry smiles. Perhaps the editor might have suggested it all stayed there. If all this was really meant to be tongue in cheek or said with a kind smile, consider rewriting the prose.The "real reality" about science is that it benefits from advances on all fronts, both the microscopic and the macroscopic. Both the linear and the non-linear. It is men and women who do science, not machines, and unfortunately they sometimes bring in hubris with an inch gained here or there. Go ahead and buy the book (it's reasonably priced...), enjoy the first narrative and try to disregard the second, if you can.

I couldn't let the previous reviewer's comments stand without comment. I can't believe the reviewer read the same book that I did. Bak's treatment is detailed, clear, and balanced. When he is enthusiastic he let's you know exactly why, leaving you free to make up your own mind. The fact that most of the studies he describes were published in Physical Review Letters might tell you something about their quality. The book provides wonderful examples of the role of models in science, much better than any I've come across in rather extensive search for materials for a course on the Nature of Science I help teach. I'm reading the book for the third time (not because it is difficult to read, but simply because it repays rereading) and I admire it more with each reading. If you want to understand models that display Self Organized Criticality, this book is without question the place to go.

If you believe in Occam's razor, you will probably like the idea of self-organized criticality (SOC). It is simple enough to be understood and appreciated by non-mathematicians, yet profound enough to make us look at phenomenons in nature and society in a different way. Per Bak presented SOC in a highly readable fashion. It is not the difficulty of the subject or the writing that makes the reader stop and ruminate, as is the case with many science writings, but the simple yet intriguing nature of the idea itself. Is the author overreaching in some of his assertions and conclusions (as some people took exception to his choice of title)? Perhaps. But this book is short and highly enjoyable, and I think it is worth spending a few hours of one's time reading it.