This article in Wired Magazine, Apr-13 issue - How the Science of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer ... is about the emergence of swarms and how "individuals"from neurons and cancer cells to birds and fish organize themselves into collectives. The collectives move in predictable ways but how differs.
All this similarities seem to point a grand unified theory - I am especially interested in the impact on quant finance theories, economic behavior, phenomena like those I have touched in my other blog - A Stock Market Panic Is An Avalanche (of March 2011).
With the metaphor of starling flocks, it is nut surprising to me that panic from, say, a few investment falcons turns into collective flights .. and a large probability of co-movement is more influencing systemic risk than volatility ... it seems the predictive modeling will not be too difficult. Provided we have the data.
