Sir

Your Editorial “Reaching a tipping point” (Nature 441, 785; 200610.1038/441785a) discusses in the context of climate change the concept of a 'tipping point', from Malcolm Gladwell's book of the same name: that extraordinary change is possible if only a few key pre-conditions come together appropriately.

Gladwell's proposition embeds an older, specious belief: that directed change of the social or political world is easy, perhaps even easier than changing the physical world. But compare, for example, the building of the first atomic bomb with the elimination of racism or poverty.

When social change does occur, it is seldom as dramatic as the kinds of change described by tipping points. There is considerable continuity in social systems because of the resilience of institutions, and because, as articulated by Anthony Giddens in Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, 1991), of the basic human need for 'ontological security' — a firm belief in the continuity of social and material environments, and in the endurance of social patterns and individual self-identity.

Even if there were widespread agreement on the need for a specific social change, via a tipping point, the procedures for accomplishing this are entirely unclear. Gladwell writes about the considerable parallels between the idea of tipping points and the diffusion of innovations, but neglects the fact that more than 90% of innovations fail.

As quoted in your Editorial, Gladwell's argument runs: “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push — in just the right place — it can be tipped.”

The conclusion is valid, as far as it goes, but is highly misleading because of its rarity. The usual reality is a generally immovable world where a lot of pushing has little effect.