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Complexity, contingency, and criticality.

P Bak1, M Paczuski

  • 1Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|July 18, 1995
PubMed
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Large dynamical systems naturally organize into critical states, leading to correlated events of all sizes. This self-organized criticality explains historical contingency in fields like biology and economics.

Area of Science:

  • Complex Systems Science
  • Theoretical Biology
  • Geophysics
  • Economics

Background:

  • Dynamical systems often exhibit complexity arising from self-organization.
  • Critical states in systems allow for avalanches or punctuations of varying magnitudes.
  • Historical contingency in natural and social sciences suggests underlying organizational principles.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore the concept of self-organized criticality as an explanation for complexity.
  • To investigate how critical states lead to correlations between events.
  • To interpret historical contingency across diverse scientific disciplines through the lens of self-organized criticality.

Main Methods:

  • Mathematical modeling of sandpile systems.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analysis of biological evolution models.
  • Numerical simulations of dynamical systems.
  • Rigorous mathematical analysis of critical phenomena.

    • Main Results:

    • Demonstration that large dynamical systems self-organize into critical states.
    • Explanation of how uncorrelated events become correlated in critical states.
    • Interpretation of historical contingency as a manifestation of self-organized criticality.
    • Validation of theoretical models through simulations and mathematical proofs.

    Conclusions:

    • Self-organized criticality provides a unifying framework for understanding complexity across sciences.
    • The critical state is a fundamental organizing principle in diverse natural and social systems.
    • Mathematical and computational approaches yield significant insights into complex phenomena.