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

An accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to the applications of statistical mechanics across the sciences. The book contains a discussion of the methods of statistical physics and includes mathematical explanations alongside guidance to enable the reader to translate theory into practice.

List of contents

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Ideal Gas


• 3: Rubber Bands


• 4: Percolitis


• 5: Ferromagnetism


• 6: Maximum Entropy Methods


• 7: Power Laws


• 8: Universality, Renormalization and Critical Phenomena


• 9: Social Sciences


• 10: Biological Sciences


• 11: Physical Sciences


• Free

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 other books and numerous articles in these fields. He is fascinated by the miracle of statistical mechanics.

Product details

• Authors: Lawrence Schulman, Lawrence (Professor of Physics Schulman
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.07.2025
• EAN: 9780198961925
• ISBN: 978-0-19-896192-5
• No. of pages: 304
• Series: Oxford Graduate Texts
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Physics, astronomy > Thermodynamics; SCIENCE / Physics / Mathematical & Computational, SCIENCE / Mechanics / Thermodynamics, Thermodynamics & heat, Mathematical modelling, Statistical physics, Thermodynamics and heat