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Nature Physics 5, 531 (1 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nphys1352

Collectivist revolution in evolution

Mark Buchanan

Physics in the past few decades has become increasingly focused on collective phenomena — on the fundamentals of phase transitions and other ordering phenomena in condensed-matter systems, on pattern formation out of equilibrium, and on the rich cooperative dynamics of granular and glassy systems, polymers and other forms of 'soft matter', or charge carriers in high-temperature superconductors and other exotic materials. Maybe this was the inevitable second act following the heroic development of the standard model of the fundamental forces in the 1960s and 1970s.