Customer Reviews

Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stability of Networks and Complex Systems (The Frontiers Collection)

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Weak links by Peter Csermely is very comprehensible, systematic, readable and illustrative book about principles of complex systems theory. I have read the book several times and each time it was very interesting and inspiring for thinking, as I were founding new and new contexts. The principles of book are rooted and valid among many scientific fields and could be of use to anybody, who incline to holistic way of thinking, regardless of exact or humanistic orientation. This is important - the book is not just about some facts or knowledge, it is about a different way of thinking, it presents a new paradigm and in a very pleasant manner. I have read many books about complex systems and Weak links belongs to the best, especially for its understandability.

I've just finished reading "Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks" by Peter Csermely , who is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Semmelweis University of Budapest. The central theme is weak links are the determinants of system stability and diversity. Csermely defines a link "as 'weak', when its addition or removal does not change the mean value of a target measure at a statistically discernible way" (p. 83).

The book is an interesting read if only because its topic matter ranges from network complexity in physical systems, to biological systems, and finally social and cultural systems. Personally I think there are a few longbows drawn, but in fairness Csermely does clearly indicate where he is engaging in speculation. One fascinating discussion was the discourse on pink noise. Pink noise is also known as coloured noise, flicker noise, crackling noise and Barkhausen noise. Seemingly pink noise is present in systems as diverse as solar flares, traffic flows and group decision making, and has a stabilising or relaxing effect. Quoting several scientific sources he postulates that pink noise helps neural synchronisation, which is partly responsible for memory formation. To put it another way if you want to memorise something have Mozart playing in the background rather than bagpipes, because Mozart's music has pink noise properties!

Csermeley's discussion on immunological networks is also interesting. He says an immune system has to solve four problems:

the self/ non-self recognition problem;
the signal to noise problem;
the context problem; and
the response problem.

Now this is interesting because the later three points define the knowledge retrieval problem of a knowledge management system. Apparently weak links are the immune system's mechanism to solve these problems.

A software package typically consists of several hierarchical and modular components, which are bound by strong links. Taking a lesson from the immune system perhaps we need to build software with lots of weak links, and ensure our people and process dimensions also have many weak links? Perhaps these weak links will allow the percolation of knowledge through the human, process, and technology systems. Perhaps our real problem with knowledge management is we try to over-engineer everything and in so doing build strong links rather than weak links. I'm beginning to think weak links matter.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in networks.

Regards, Graham

If you ever needed another good reason to value your grandmother even more, you'll find the answer in "Weak links".

Structurally, his book starts with an exposition on network theory and
terminology, then the application and discussion of these concepts to
real-life complex systems on many scales and applied to many domains (physical, natural, technological, social). His main point is, as the reviewer noted above, that 'weak' links (weak: additional/removal does not statistically affect the average of some metric) stabilize systems.

The book has thorough footnotes, one can delve as deep as one would like
into the professional papers. In addition, Csermely is an honest scholar - he shows his hands when there is mere speculation (you have to see the book's unique pictograms to appreciate the effects)

After pouring through several alternatives, I have adopted this book as a
textbook for my Science of Networks class. can I recommend it to anyone without hesitation for a readable, learned and inspirational exposition. Pars pro toto, let me present one of my students' final project. She took her cues from the many wonderful tidbits in the book and undertook the following:

"A study of the network model of the typical Simpsons plot and it characteristics in comparison to other network modeled sitcoms"

Abstract: Sitcom plots have not yet been modeled a networks to establish parallels between plot properties and network properties. This study modeled sitcom plots as networks and studied network properties of these sitcom plots between and across the popular sitcoms Frasier, The Simpsons, and Friends. Episodes were modeled such that scenes were represented as nodes and segues between scenes were shown as links. It was seen that The Simpsons networks were most complex in the size, number of cycles, and average degree statistics of its episodes' network graphs. For Friends and The Simpsons, it was seen that scene nodes with the highest degrees corresponded to conflict and climax scenes qualitatively identified in the plot. Further study should be done to validate these results.

I only have two or three caveats from a specialist's point of view: The
phenomenological discovery of power laws in complex systems is not unusual
and may not be evidence of any SF properties. Scale-free is an abused
term, and I wish the controversy about it were explained a bit more. Also, from a modelling point of view, I wish Doyle and Carlson's work on HOT systems were discussed in more depth.

But these are minor points, relatively speaking. This is a gem of a book:
erudite, humane, funny, accessible and thoroughly fascinating. On every
page, there are delights that lead down new intellectual paths.

Csermely did a great service to pedagogy and to this budding science with
this magisterial survey. Outstanding in its ease of access for intelligent
undergraduates and commendable for intellectual honesty - I wish more
books (textbooks and otherwise) were written this way.