More than the Sum of the Parts: Complexity in Physics and Beyond - Hardcover

Satz, Helmut

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192864173 ISBN 13: 9780192864178

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2022

Synopsis

From physics to information theory and cosmology, from the structure of animal societies to the linguistic analysis of human writing, systems consisting of many interacting constituents often show a collective behaviour not predictable from the interaction of the individual constituents. In More than the Sum of the Parts, Helmut Satz addresses different forms of this complex behaviour, which have been thoroughly investigated only in the past decades. Although these studies originate in physics, the behaviour is found to be universal, ranging from the structure of the early universe to the formation of flocks of birds, and to the frequency of words in literary texts. Complexity is thus becoming an increasingly important interdisciplinary field for future scientific research.

In a conceptual and non-technical way, Satz opens up this exciting field for a general readership and those studying any field of the natural sciences.

About this title

About the Author

Helmut Satz is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at the University of Bielefield in Germany and has been with the university since 1971. From 1989-1996, he was Staff Member, European Center for Nuclear Research CERN, Geneva. During his career he has been the author of around 250 scientific papers and books, his most recent being The Rules of the Flock: Self-Organization and Swarm Structure in Animal Societies.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192864173
• ISBN 13: 9780192864178
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160