A basic physicochemical sociology diagram showing, on the left (macro-view): a physiochemical sociologist studying social mass, defined as an aggregate of human molecules, each defined as powered CHNOPS+22 molecule or chemical, via the advanced perspective, using, predominately, the universal methods of chemical thermodynamics, of semi-open isothermal isobaric systems, freely reacting, i.e. freely running (Lewis, 1923), and on the right (micro-view): the nature of individual interactions, relationship bonds, family dynamics, sexual interactions, psychological phenomena, etc., from the mechanism view, according to physics and chemistry. See: Alfred Lotka for how micro-mechanics relates to macro-mechanics.

“On the physico-chemical law of development and dynamics, our society has reached what is called the critical point where it is near a new phase or equilibrium.”

“The social system thus defined and characterized is clearly an instrument that may be employed, within limits, similar to those explained [by Gibbs] for the physico-chemical system, in studying all the subjects of the first class (history, literature, economics, sociology, law, politics, theology, education, etc.). For like history, literature, law, and theology, all these subjects are conversant with the interactions of individuals in their manifold relations, with their sentiments and interests, with their sayings and doings, while none can dispense with considerations of the mutual dependence of many factors.”

— Lawrence Henderson (1935), Pareto’s General Sociology: a Physiologist’s Interpretation

The 2014 interaction of chemical engineer Marc Donohue and leadership psychologist Richard Kilburg, as presented in their “Leadership and Organizational Behavior: a Thermodynamic Approach”, involving some 12 total authors in various fields, allowed the latter, the psychologist, to formulate theories on leadership and group formation dynamics via the eyes of the former, i.e. a “thermodynamic lens”, as American business leadership scholar Bruce Avolio (Ѻ) refers to their approach, thus bring about a soft science + hard science amalgamation; which is a generalized model of physicochemical sociology, applied. [13]

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer (1818), The World as Will and Representation (preface)

Left: a depiction of the historical Western Washington University "physicochemical sociology" group, comprised of leader sociologist Ed Stephan working in coordination with physicist Louis Barrett and chemist George Gerhold, in efforts to formulate sociology in terms of physical and chemical fundamentals; one precipitate of which being the "Stephan social system" (left), one of the first visual models of a society (or social system) to employ social chemical potential theory. Right: A depiction of physicochemical sociology, namely: the "torch of knowledge" being passed to from the physicochemical sciences (physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, natural science) to the humanities, first and foremost the social science department (sociology), thereby bringing enlightenment to the latter.

“When applying synergetic concepts to sociology it must be stated that there exists no direct ‘short-cut’ to transfer physico-chemical concepts to sociology.”

The three ingrained beliefs of anthropism, which one must grapple with whenever the physical science based evolution view is applied to humanities, according to Ernst Haeckel (1899), namely: anthropocentrism, belief that man is the preordained center of the universe; second: anthropomorphism, belief that man’s shape is the ideal perfect form and or fashioned in the image of god; and third: anthropolatrism, belief that main has personal immortality, and or that the universe operates on man’s acts via some type of moral restitution principle, as conceptualized by soul or equivalent, e.g. karma (or spirit); each of which, according to Haeckel, deriving from Abrahamic-based monotheism (or Anunian theology, in modern terms).

“Researching the analogy of physical chemistry to sociological studies of human societies is a very attractive area particularly assuming the role of thermodynamic links, which can be functional until the relation between inherent particles and independent people, is overcome by the conscious actions of humans because people are not so easily classifiable as are mere chemicals [see: human chemical]. Such feedback between the human intimate micro-world to the societal macro-state can change the traditional form of thermodynamic functions, which, nevertheless, are here considered only in a preparatory stage of feelings. Therefore this sociology-like contribution can be classified as a very first though rather simplified approach to the problem whose more adequate solution will not, hopefully, take another century [2105] as was the development of the understanding of heat and the development of the concept of the early elements.”

The CourseHero.com banner for BYU’s Science Phy 453 “Sociology and Physics” course taught by David Barnard, one of America’s first physicochemical sociology like college courses (see: hmolscience courses). [12]

Pakistani organometallic chemist Mirza Beg's 2015 Academia.com user profile, with the tag "physico-chemical sociology", shown at the time of the upload of his Oct 22 “Socio-Physico-Chemical Interpretation of Poverty, Class Structure and Social Pollution” article, replete with human chemical reaction theory conceptualization and a human chemical thermodynamics basis. [6]

● Goethe and Empedocles
● Gibbs and Goethe
● Empedocles + Goethe + Beg

	Physicochemical Sociology
	Composition
	(a) Atomic sociology | Four element philosophy | Greco-Roman philosophy Representative: Thales, Empedocles, Parmenides, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero (b) Social physics [17th century-18th century, early] Representative: Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Comte, Quetelet
	Sorokin "Mechanistic School" classification (1928)
	(c) Social mechanics Representatives: Antonio Portuondo, Spiru Haret, Alfred Lotka (d) Social physics [18th century, late] Representatives: Henry Carey (e) Social energetics | Social thermodynamics Representatives: Ernest Solvay, Bekhterev, Wilhelm Ostwald, Thomas Carver, and Leon Winiarski (f) Mathematical sociology Representatives: Vilfredo Pareto and Filippo Carli
	(g) Physico-chemical social dynamics | Gibbs-based sociohistory Representatives: Henry Adams (h) Sociology 23 | Gibbs+Pareto based sociology Representatives: Lawrence Henderson, Harvard Pareto circle (i) Mathematical economics | Gibbs-based economics Representatives: Edwin Wilson, Paul Samuelson (j) Social physics [20th century, early-mid] | Sociophysics [20th century, late] Representative: John Q. Stewart, Arthur Iberall, Paris Arnopoulos, Serge Galam (k) Social chemistry | Molecular sociology | Sociochemistry Representatives: Goethe, Thomas Huxley, Henry Adams, Roy Henderson,
	(l) Physicochemical humanities Representatives: Goethe, Buchner, Mirza Beg, Thomas Wallace (n) Socio-thermodynamics | Human chemical thermodynamics Representatives: Harold Blum, Frederick Rossini, Jurgen Mimkes, Christopher Hirata, David Hwang, Surya Pati, and Wenyuan Niu (o) Modern social Newtons: Representative: Wayne Angel, Erich Muller, Josip Stepanic, Adriaan de Lange, Sture Nordholm
Adjacent (top): American physical chemist Frederick Rossini explaining, in his 19171 "Chemical Thermodynamics in the Real World" address, how freedom and security equate to entropy and enthalpy, respectively, in society, and how human "reactions" are larger types of chemical reactions, equilibrating in society; the first robust lecture on physicochemical sociology; the contentions and ramifications of which acting to spark the Rossini debate (2007-present): Adjacent (bottom, left): Indian-born Pakistani organometallic chemist Mirza Beg’s 1987 New Dimensions in Sociology: a Physico-Chemical Approach to Human Behavior, the first general treatise on physicochemical sociology, showing people as reactive chemicals or molecules, in different states of aggregation, and societies conceptualized as being confined in semi-permeable reaction beakers or test tube. [2]

Linus Pauling, in 1917, as a chemical engineering student at Oregon State University, was taught the "hook-n-eye" bonding model, John Dalton version, which he found so archaic that went on to pen his quantum chemistry based On the Nature of the Chemical Bond (1939) to remedy the situation. The equivalent patch solution for 21st century chemical engineers does not, of yet, exist, in any chemical engineering curriculum, despite a near century long work in human free energy theory, of which part of the Gibbs energy must exist quantifiably in the bond of relationships (bond energy), mechanistically described by a “force”, aka relationship force, for lack of a better name, described generally in terms of fermion-boson interactions.

See main: Relationship force

“The premise of the subject of ‘human chemistry’, referring to things such as: chemical aphorisms (Empedocles, 450BC), love defined as a chemical reaction (Goethe, 1809), attraction and repulsion between ‘human molecules’ defining social chemistry (Adams, 1885), chemical thermodynamics explaining freedom and security in society (Rossini, 1971) and the post-9/11 debates on this to follow (Rossini debate, 2008), entropy of human civilizations (2005), etc., sounds like crackpottery to me and abuse of the word ‘chemistry’. Students interested in the study of human interactions should consult sociology and psychology, where these topics are covered.”

— Marcin Borkowski (2010), on whether human chemistry should be taught as part of required college education, Sep 27 [8]

A Buchanan-Gladwell model (2001) of social physics, defined by concepts including: social heat, tipping points, activation energy, connectors, six degrees, Dunbar numbers, etc.; the above diagram showing how the rubbing of Bosnia with Austria-Hungray created "social friction" which on 28 Jun 1914 produced enough heat (or social heat) to "spark" the flame or social combustion of the first world war. [3]

English poetry & science scholar Peter Middleton's 2015 section "Willard Gibbs and Social Science", the core subject of physicochemical sociology, from his Physics Envy, wherein he traces the path from Gibbs' chemical thermodynamics into sociology via Lawrence Henderson, the Harvard Pareto Circle, and Sociology 23. [9]

See also: Hmolscience quotes; Two cultures calls

“Social scientists are reaching the long-delayed conclusion that happenings in the social and the political sphere are not the result of chance, and individual impulse or willing, or of direct and arbitrary interference of an infinite power [god]. Social and political happenings, like physical and chemical actions and reactions, occur in an orderly and law-abiding manner. Events, movements, reforms, agitations, decay or growth of institutions may, in a measure, be prophesied, directed and aided or retarded. There is, or may be, a social science (or social sciences) as well as physical sciences. Social mechanics, social physics and social chemistry are real terms.”

— Frank Carlton (1912), “History-Making Forces”

“… emergence, the physicochemical, the organismal, the mental and the social. Hence, it till the advent of a few super-Einsteins (see: another Newton; polymathy degree problem), theoretical biology must stand as a combination of oppositions—a compositio oppositorum.”

— William Wheeler (c.1935), “Essay” (person who in 1927 introduced Lawrence Henderson to the works of Vilfredo Pareto)

“As late as a week ago, such a phrase as ‘hopefully awaiting the gradual convergence of the physical sciences and the social sciences’ would have provoked no more than an ironic tingle or two at the back of my neck. Now it howls through the Ponchitoula Swamp, the very sound and soul of despair.”

— Walker Percy (1961), The Moviegoer; opening quote to Philip Mirowski’s 1989 More Heat Than Light

“Ideas about order and disorder began to germinate in my mind about the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. Their origin was in the areas of physics and chemistry—the Carnot cycle, of course, as well as my wanderings through the labyrinth of chemical thermodynamics. It was about this time that the laws and principles of thermodynamics began to be applied on an increasing scale to the geological and biological sciences. My discovery in the 1950s of Shannon’s and Wiener’s development of information theory and its relation to statistical mechanics meant to me that the concept of entropy was much more universal than my formal courses [BS, MA, MA, PhD, in geology, chemistry, and metallurgical engineering, at MIT, Columbia, and Stanford] had indicated. The conviction grew that energy and entropy relationships were fundamental not only in understanding processes in physics and chemistry but also in astronomy, geology, and biology. Inevitably this led to the conjecture that further extrapolation would lead to the human sciences and arts, and even to psychology, sociology, history, music, philosophy and religion.”

— Norman Dolloff (1975), Heat Death and the Phoenix (Preface)

“The sun and earth, or storms and earthquakes, which nowadays we understand as manifestations of natural physico-chemical forces, [were once seen as] persons or as the results of actions and designs of persons [gods]. Only gradually did the transition come about from magical and metaphysical thinking to scientific thinking about the physico-chemical aspects of the world. The change was to a large degree dependent on the fading away of heteronomous, naively egocentric explanatory models. In sociology, we are [presently] confronted with a similar task of emancipation.”

— Norbert Elias (1978), What is Sociology? [3]

“Man must jump, as Adams liked to say, if he would save himself; a moral and intellectual elite must be recruited. If nothing else would serve to make moral philosophers out of historians, the fear of imminent annihilation might. University education must be revolutionized by the physicist-historian.”

— Ernest Samuels (1989), Henry Adams

“The first and second laws of thermodynamics are usually presented as straight physics. Local problems (such as heat engines) may be assigned but seldom is any effort made to examine universal human problems. Considering moral implications of these laws makes them relevant to students, gaining their attention and easing instruction.”

— Alvin Saperstein (1982), “Point of View: Ethics in the Classroom: Morality and the Laws of Thermodynamics”

“The study of the interaction between the natural sciences and the social sciences has been a grossly neglected field of study.”

— Bernard Cohen (1993), “Analogy, Homology, and Metaphor in the Interaction between the Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, Especially Economics” [11]

“It is interesting to note that socio-thermodynamics is only accessible to chemical engineers and metallurgists. These are the only people who know phase diagrams and their usefulness. It cannot be expected, in our society, that sociologists will appreciate the potential of these ideas.”

— Ingo Muller (2007), A History of Thermodynamics

German-born American electrochemical engineer Eugene Roeber's famous Sep 1914 editorial "The European War", wherein he outlines a proto-version of human chemical thermodynamics, in his explanation that WII is a large phase change global social chemical reaction, in short. [1]