Critical mass : how one thing leads to another : being an enquiry into the interplay of chance and necessity in the way that human culture, customs, institutions, cooperation and conflict arise / Philip Ball.

London : Arrow, 2005.

xii, 644 pages : illustrations, portraits, charts ; 20 cm

This item was donated as part of the Godfrey Boyle archive held by Wellcome Collection, reference PP/GBO https://wellcomecollection.org/works/t5pbagvp

Copy 1. Donor: Godfrey Boyle.

Introduction : political arithmetick -- Raising Leviathan : the brutish world of Thomas Hobbes -- Lesser forces : the mechanical philosophy of matter -- The law of large numbers : regularities from randomness -- The grand ah-whoom : why some things happen all at once -- On growth and form : the emergence of shape and organization -- The march of reason : chance and necessity in collective motion -- On the road : the inexorable dynamics of traffic -- Rhythms of the marketplace : the shaky hidden hand of economics -- Agents of fortune : why interaction matters to the economy -- Uncommon proportions : critical states and the power of the straight line -- The work of many hands : the growth of firms -- Join the club : alliances in business and politics -- Multitudes in the valley of decision : collective influence and social change -- The colonization of culture : globalization, diversity, and synthetic societies -- Small worlds : networks that bring us together -- Weaving the web : the shape of cyberspace -- Order in Eden : learning to cooperate -- Pavlov's victory : is reciprocity good for us? -- Toward Utopia? : heaven, hell, and social planning -- Epilogue: Curtain call.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 615-633) and index.