The Nature Of The Self-Organized Critical System

It is important to acknowledge that without the critical state, interesting phenomena cannot occur. The non-critical state is at equilibrium, where Gibb’s free energy is equal to zero, and there are no avalanches. Therefore, the critical state is not at equilibrium, this is only an illusion society sees as a result of the nature of self-organized critical systems. During the intermittent periods between avalanches, society cannot detect any changes, so it is assumed that nothing is happening, when in reality, the system is still changing within the critical state and building up to the next avalanche. It is impossible to predict the outcome of a complex system; no matter how much data is collected. Beginning with contingency based on history and an idea, everything about every little thing about the system would have to be known about the complex system to predict the outcome. Unfortunately, this is impossible, since everything within the system would have to be measured simultaneously and constantly. Countless systems in nature are in the …show more content…
Bak argues that mass extinction is an inherent property of a species, and is not the result of external factors such as a large natural disaster, since they are complex systems. Punctuated equilibrium is a manifestation of the self-organized critical state in biological evolution. For long periods of time, it appears that evolution is not occurring, simply because the system is in the critical state. This intermittent stage is dominated by the Red Queen Effect, where it takes all of the evolutionary capabilities of a species just to stay in the same place on a larger scale, since all other organisms are evolving as well. However, large evolutionary events, such as the Cambrian explosion or the Permian extinction are a direct result of the shifting critical state though huge avalanches in the self-organized critical