Small World: Uncovering Nature's Hidden Networks - Hardcover

Buchanan, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297607421 ISBN 13: 9780297607427

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002

Synopsis

Most of us have had the experience of running into a friend of a friend far away from home - and feeling that the world is somehow smaller than it should be. We usually write off such unlikely encounters as coincidence, even though it seems to happen with uncanny frequency. According to a handful of physicists at Los Alamos and other cutting-edge research labs around the world, it turns out that this 'small-world' phenomenon is no coincidence at all. Rather, it is a manifestation of a hidden and powerful design that binds the world together. In SMALL WORLD, Mark Buchanan tells the story of how a stunning discovery in complexity science is revolutionising the way we understand networks. The Internet, the brain, power-grids and the global economy are all networks that seem to have evolved a 'small-world' geometry - with properties independent of the nature of the things themselves. SMALL WORLD argues that this underlying pattern may be one of nature's greatest design tricks, and the book shows us - concisely and engagingly - how scientists are putting this new insight to work. The discovery promises to change the way we see the web of relationships that weaves our lives together. What's more, it may well provide the foundation for a new kind of physics that searches for the laws not of substance, but of pure form.

About this title

Review:

On reading Mark Buchanan's new book, Small World, you can see Kevin Bacon has a lot to answer for. As anyone who has visited The Oracle of Bacon will know, the actor is well connected: only two or three handshakes separate him from every other actor on the Internet Movie Database. Is Mr Bacon special? No. We are all of us--all six billion of us--only about six "degrees of separation" away from each other. Whenever coincidence prompts to say that "it's a small world", we have, says Buchanan, stumbled upon a piece of mathematics as fundamental to the natural world as Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Mean. "Small world networks" are everywhere, underlying diverse cultural, biological and even physical systems.

Buchanan has been quick off the mark with this book: the mature study of small world networks is barely four years old; so, naturally enough, the same pioneering names recur often as he outlines the field's development. But there is nothing contingent or flimsy about Buchanan's arguments as he stakes out the numerous areas for which this new science is already providing surprising insights.

One of the great surprise strengths of this book is Buchanan's grasp of social policy and the behaviours of governments and organisations. In an account that does its level best not to shortchange any application of a new science, it's good to see Buchanan addressing ordinary human applications with such authority and enthusiasm. This approach should reassure those readers who tremble at the idea that this might turn out to be "a book about maths". As far as that goes, the maths is pretty easy territory (spectacular, too)--and Buchanan is an excellent guide. --Simon Ings

Review:

'Buchanan excels at making abstract science real and easy for the general reader to understand' -- Scotsman

'Finally, a readable, simple explanation of one of the most surprising rules of complex networks' -- Praise for 'Small World' from John L. Casti, author of 'Mathematical Mountaintops: The Five Most Famous Problems of All Time'

'Refreshingly courageous and potentially very important . . . I wish there were more juicy, thought-provoking books like Buchanan’s' -- Praise for 'Ubiquity' in the Guardian:

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0297607421
• ISBN 13: 9780297607427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224