Talk:Tipping point

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I've moved the material on Gladwell's book to its own page, with some expansion and editing. I deleted the paragraph below, as it's very unencyclopaedic and doesn't help me understand what connection there is, if any, between the concepts.

For comparison, consider some of the recent work of the Santa Fe Institute and others on the emergence of order and complexity in dense chaotic systems. A tipping point is rather like a social "phase transition". You're familiar with the phase transition of water, to become ice or steam. A tipping point is the same sort of thing... a point when suddenly everything changes and the properties become nonlinear. Well these phase transitions and tipping points are everywhere, and often accompany the "sudden" emergence of ordered systems from random systems. The crystalization of minerals, the formation of astronomical systems, the extinction of species, and perhaps even the first appearance of "life" are all such examples. The concept is quite fascinating and, it would seem, important to understanding the nature of the complexity we see in the fascinating world around us. If this sounds interesting, you might check out Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe.

Markalexander100 19:45, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)