Punctuated Equilibria and Self-Organized Criticality
Per Bak (Brookhaven National Lab)
The dynamics of complex systems in nature often occurs in terms of
punctuations, or avalanches, rather than following a smooth gradual
path. Earthquakes, stock market crashes, and mass extinctions in
biology are examples of this turbulent behavior. It will be argued
that this is a consequence of self-organized criticality, the process by
which large dynamical systems evolve to a state with no
characteristic time or length scale.