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.