Related papers: Social Expansion versus Social Fragmentation
Social dynamics are shaped by each person's actions, as well as by collective trends that emerge when individuals are brought together. These latter kind of influences escape anyone's control. They are, instead, dominated by aggregate…
Societal complexity may be at a historical peak. Distinct from entropy, complexity tends to rise as systems move away from order, crest at an intermediate state, and decline as entropy continues increasing. The use of a thermodynamic…
Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of…
Numerous researchers from various disciplines have explored commonalities and divergences in the evolution of complex social formations. Here, we explore whether there is a 'characteristic' time-course for the evolution of social complexity…
Structural change consists of industrial diversification towards more productive, knowledge intensive activities. However, changes in the productive structure bear inherent links with job creation and income distribution. In this paper, we…
The enlargement of the European Union to new countries in 2004 launched mechanisms supporting the development of various social and economic areas, as well as levelling the differences between the Community members in these areas. This…
Various self-organized characteristics of the international system can be identified with the help of a complexity science perspective. The perspective discussed in this article is based on various complexity science concepts and theories,…
In this article I discuss the outcome of an exploratory research project based on complexity science concepts and theories; this research is focused on the Great Power war dynamics in the time period 1495 - 1945. According to this research,…
Classic economic science is reaching the limits of its explanatory powers. Complexity science uses an increasingly larger set of different methods to analyze physical, biological, cultural, social, and economic factors, providing a broader…
Understanding urban growth is one with understanding how society evolves to satisfy the needs of its individuals in sharing a common space and adapting to the territory. We propose here a quantitative analysis of the historical development…
Ideas, behaviors, and opinions spread through social networks. If the probability of spreading to a new individual is a non-linear function of the fraction of the individuals' affected neighbors, such a spreading process becomes a "complex…
Human interactions can be either positive or negative, giving rise to different complex social or anti-social phenomena. The dynamics of these interactions often lead to certain spatio-temporal patterns and complex networks, which can be…
With a folk understanding that political polarization refers to socio-political divisions within a society, many have proclaimed that we are more divided than ever. In this account, polarization has been blamed for populism, the erosion of…
This text provides with an introduction to the modern approach of artificiality and simulation in social sciences. It presents the relationship between complexity and artificiality, before introducing the field of artificial societies which…
The size of cities is known to play a fundamental role in social and economic life. Yet, its relation to the structure of the underlying network of human interactions has not been investigated empirically in detail. In this paper, we map…
Levels of sociality in nature vary widely. Some species are solitary; others live in family groups; some form complex multi-family societies. Increased levels of social interaction can allow for the spread of useful innovations and…
Social contagion has been studied in various contexts. Many instances of social contagion can be modeled as an infection process where a specific state (adoption of product, fad, knowledge, behavior, etc.) spreads from individual to…
The quest for historically impactful science and technology provides invaluable insight into the innovation dynamics of human society, yet many studies are limited to qualitative and small-scale approaches. Here, we investigate scientific…
The International System is a self-organized system that shows emergent behavior. During the timeframe (1495-1945) covered in this study, a finite-time singularity and four accompanying accelerating log-periodic cycles shaped the dynamics…
Population dynamic of getting divorced depends on many global factors, including social norms, economy, law or demographics as well as individual factors like the level of interpersonal or problem-solving skills of the spouses. We sought to…