In science, social physics or physique sociale is term coined between 1830 and 1842 by French sociologist and philosopher Auguste Comte to define the study of the laws of society or the science of civilization. [1] Specifically, in his Cours de philosophie positive (Positive Philosophy) Comte argued that social physics would complete the scientific description of the world that Galileo, Newton, and others had begun:

“Now that the human mind has grasped celestial and terrestrial physics, mechanical and chemical, organic physics, both vegetable and animal, there remains one science, to fill up the series of sciences or observation—social physics. This is what men have now most need of; and this it is the principal aim of the present work to establish.”

In recent years, building on the development of the kinetic theory of gases (1859) and statistical mechanics (1872), founded during the last half of the 19th century, some authors have begun to incorporate a statistical thermodynamic perspective in models of social physics in which people are viewed as atoms or molecules (human molecules) such that the law of large numbers yields social behaviors such as, for instance, the 80-20 rule, wherein, typically, 80 percent of a country's wealth is distributed among 20 percent of the population. [2]

Implications
When one applies statistical thought or the "logic of large numbers" to society, according to English chemist and physicist Philip Ball, the concept of human free will is the first question in the minds of those encountering the new "physics of society" for the first time. The debate on this topic, according to Ball, began to rage in the 19th century and still preoccupies sociologists today. [3]

See also
● Social thermodynamics
● Sociological thermodynamics
● Socio-thermodynamics

References
1. (a) Ball, Philip. (2004). Critical Mass - How One Things Leads to Another, (pg. 58). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
(b) Nisbet, Robert A. (1970). The Social Bond - an Introduction to the Study of Society, (pg. 29). New York: Alfred A Knopf.
2. Buchanan, Mark. (2007). The Social Atom - why the Rich get Richer, Cheaters get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You, (pgs. x-xi). New York: Bloomsbury.
3. (a) Ball, Philip. (2004). Critical Mass - How One Things Leads to Another, (pgs. 71-72). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

External links
● Physics of Society - A collection of articles by English chemist and physicst Phillip Ball.