When Things Grow Many: Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature

Lawrence Schulman

Dec 2021 · Oxford University Press

About this eBook

Aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students, When Things Grow Many is an accessible and engaging textbook introducing the theory of statistical mechanics, as well as its fascinating real-world applications. The book's original approach, which covers interdisciplinary applications of statistical mechanics to a wide range of subjects, including chemistry, biology, linguistics, economics, sociology and more, is bound to appeal to a wide audience. While the first part of the book introduces the various methods of statistical physics, including complexity, emergence, universality, self-organized criticality, power laws and other timely topics, the final sections focus on specific relevance of these methods to the social, biological and physical sciences. The mathematical content is woven throughout the book in the form of equations, as well as further background and explanations being provided in footnotes and appendices.

About the author

Since completing his PhD at Princeton University, Lawrence S. Schulman has taught at Indiana University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and is currently a Professor of Physics at Clarkson University. His research interests span statistical physics, condensed matter physics, quantum mechanics and cosmology. He has contributed to diverse areas from galactic morphology to the arrow of time and has authored two books and numerous articles in these fields. He is fascinated by the miracle of statistical mechanics.