Critical Point
A specific condition (temperature, pressure, or other parameter) at which a phase transition occurs and where systems exhibit special properties including power law distributions and long-range correlations.
Used in the Books
This term appears in 3 chapters:
"The sweet spot is the edge between them. Physicists studying starling flocks discovered that flocks operate at a "critical point" - a specific balance of separation, alignment, and cohesion rules - where collective behavior becomes scale-free."
"...ence from complexity science suggests that certain biological systems - gene networks, neural networks, immune systems, ecosystems - may operate near critical points between order and chaos, though this remains actively debated among researchers. Empirical evidence is mixed, and not all complex systems necessarily..."
"...ity exhibits power law-like characteristics has implications for information processing regardless of the underlying mechanism, but mapping specific "critical point" analogies to organizational contexts requires far more empirical validation than currently exists. Species Abundance Distributions: Ecological ..."
Biological Context
Neural systems may operate near critical points, providing optimal information processing. Ecosystems at critical points between stable states show enhanced sensitivity to perturbation. Critical points are boundaries between qualitatively different behaviors.