In
science,
sociophysics is the study of
social phenomena from a
physics perspective. The subject seems to deal with
thermodynamics in part; albeit, the majority of theories in this field seem to be on statistical extrapolations or phase transition models.
A noted researcher in the field is physicist
Serge Galam claims that he has been in the field of sociophysics since the late 1970s. [1] A noted researcher in this field is Canadian political scientist
Paris Arnopoulos and his 1993 book
Sociophysics, in which he speculates on heat, pressure, temperature, entropy, and volumes of societies. [3]
At the 2008 international workshop on socio physics, at Torino, Italy, the focus was on the statistical physics modeling of large scale social phenomena, such as opinion formation, cultural dissemination, the origin and
evolution of language, crowd behavior, social contagion; where it was stated that previous years had witnessed the attempt to study collective phenomena emerging from the interactions of individuals as elementary units in social structures. The workshop worked to promote effective cooperation between physicists and social scientists. [2]
See also●
Social physics●
Social chemistry●
Socio-thermodynamics●
Sociological thermodynamicsReferences1. Galam, Serge. (2004). “
Sociophysics: a Personal Testimony.”,
Laboratory of Heterogeneous and Disorderly Environments, Paris. Arxiv.org.
2.
Sociophysics – International Workshop, ISI Foundation, Torino, Italy, 26-29 May 2008.
3. Arnopoulos, Paris. (2005).
Sociophysics: Cosmos and Chaos in Nature and Culture (
thermics, pgs. 26-31)
. Nova Publishers, 1993 first edition.
Further reading● Chakrabarti, Bikas K. Chakraborti, Anirban, and Chatterjee, Arnab. (2006).
Econophysics and Sociophysics: Trends and Perspectives.
Wiley-VCH.