Some of the main recent books in sociophysics: Canadian political scientist Paris Arnopoulos' 1993 Sociophysics; the 2006 Econophysics and Sociophysics, with chapters by German physicist Jurgen Mimkes, e.g. “A Thermodynamic Formulation of Social Science”; French physicist Serge Galam's 2012 Sociophysics; and the 2012 Econophysics, with an end chapter by Romanians economist and econophysicist Gheorghe Savoiu and physicist and sociophysicist Ion Siman’s entitled “Sociophysics: A New Science or a New Domain for Physicists in a Modern University”, both outline the newly growing science of sociophysics. [8] The last two are Sen Parongama and Bikas Chakrabarti's Sociophysics book and Curtis Blakely's 2015 Socio-Physics, focused on penology. [17] |
A recent The-Difference-Between.com “sociophysics” and “physics” summary. (Ѻ) |
“It is the possible development of theory (e.g., kinetic theory or sociophysics) and practice (e.g., social engineering) that may be useful for men.”
“To suggest that humans could behave like atoms was looked upon as a blasphemy to both hard science and human complexity, a total nonsense, something to be condemned. And it has been indeed condemned during the last fifteen years.”In 1993, Canadian political scientist Paris Arnopoulos and his 1993 book Sociophysics, in which he speculates on heat, pressure, temperature, entropy, and volumes of societies. [3]
A diagram from Serge Galam’s 2011 workshop talk “From Mr. Ising to the Wonderful World of Sociophysics” extolling on the notion that the Ising model (left) of electron spin alignment (magnetic field direction uniformity) behaviors can be applied to models of human behavior alignments, e.g. political view alignment uniformity, a classic type of "social physics" (e.g. Ball, Buchanan) or "sociophysics" (e.g. Galam) argument. [10] |
Do humans behave much like atoms? Sociophysics, which uses tools and concepts from the physics of disordered matter to describe some aspects of social and political behavior, answers in the affirmative. But advocating the use of models from the physical sciences to understand human behavior could be perceived as tantamount to dismissing the existence of human free will and also enabling those seeking manipulative skills.Here we see Galem outlining a social atom or human atom approach to the application of physics to sociology; and in his "but" comment, see a defensiveness commonly seen in regard to the amount of "attack" one will experience whenever socio-physics, socio-chemistry, or socio-thermodynamics formulation is attempted (see: objection to), which is odd being that France is the most non-religious country in regards to belief systems.
This thought-provoking book argues it is just the contrary. Indeed, future developments and evaluation will either show sociophysics to be inadequate, thus supporting the hypothesis that people can primarily be considered to be free agents, or valid, thus opening the path to a radically different vision of society and personal responsibility. This book attempts to explain why and how humans behave much like atoms, at least in some aspects of their collective lives, and then proposes how this knowledge can serve as a unique key to a dramatic leap forwards in achieving more social freedom in the real world. At heart, sociophysics and this book are about better comprehending the richness and potential of our social interaction, and so distancing ourselves from inanimate atoms.
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In 2000, a vicarious "paternity" of sociophysics debate erupted, of sorts, between French physicist Serge Galam and German physicist Dietrich Stauffer; the tensions of which still exist as of 2012; a debate that is a bit vacuous being that (a) French philosopher Auguste Comte is already classified as the "father of social physics" and (b) American physicist John Q. Stewart ran an entire social physics group at Princeton a half a century prior to either of them . [6] |
See main: Sociophysics conferencesIn 2002, Germany began hosting the first econophysics conferences; followed by similar conferences in: Poland (2004), Romania (2008), Italy (2008), and France (2011).
“Sociophysics uses some methods and concepts coming from physics to describe certain social and political behaviors. Galam’s sociophysics study the existing knowledge thanks to methods borrowed from statistical physics. Because sociophysics compares the behavior of people with the behavior of atomic particles, it is not an exact science.”— Christophe Thovex and Francky Trichet (2012) [9]
Left: poster to French physicist Serge Galam’s 2011 conference talk “Sociophysics: do Humans Behave Like Atoms?”, focused on the subject of opinion dynamics. [5] Right: diagram of French physicist Serge Galam’s 1970s-2012 renegade experience of being a physicist having to practice sociophysics as a hobby, alongside his regular physics duties, the way normal physicists play tennis, so as to not disturb the orthodoxy of academia, from his chapter section 3.5: More About Academic Freedom. [6] |
A 2009 social physics (sociophysics) style homework problems, in Geography Work Book, identifying American physicist John Q. Stewart as the initiator of the field of social physics or socio-physics as the field came to be called into the 1980s. [16] |