[CART360] nexus by marc buchanan

[Vincent Leclerc]

Coincidence is the current focus of modish mathematical investigation.
Kicked off, according to Buchanan, by a 1998 paper published in *Nature*,
research on the nature of coincidence posits that deep-seated principles
order huge, seemingly inchoate assemblies of objects. According to these
conjectured principles, any member of a gigantic assembly of similar members
(say of six billion human beings) can connect with any other member in
astonishingly few steps. The idea seems ubiquitous, cropping up in food
chains, the cell, neural networks, disease propagation, or electrical power
grids--all arenas explored by Buchanan. This connection of objects in a set,
dubbed "small worlds," comes in two "flavors": egalitarian networks and
aristocratic networks, an example of the latter being the Internet. These
are very interesting concepts, but before diving in, readers will want to
know what they might get from Buchanan's presentation of various
mathematicians' papers. Intimating that a small-worlds perspective might
reveal the workings of economics as well as biology and ecology, Buchanan
points up the relevance of his investigation. *Gilbert Taylor*

http://www.amazon.ca/Nexus-Worlds-Groundbreaking-Theory-Networks/dp/0393324427
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