Kent Physics Centre

In principle, the basic laws of mechanics allow us to predict how any physical system will behave for all time coming. In practice, this is extremely difficult when dealing with any system that has many interacting parts and is driven either internally or by the environment. Examples are everywhere, ranging in scale from motor proteins that transport cargo around cells, through flocks of birds that maintain cohesion by observing the flight of others, up to systems of socially-learned behaviours in human populations at the global scale. In this talk, I will focus on two such examples, highlighting the role that fluctuations play in keeping flocks together and in understanding how human languages change.