Related papers: Social Mechanics
A type of mechanics will be presented that possesses some distinctive properties. On the one hand, its physical description & rules of operation are readily comprehensible & intuitively clear. On the other, it fully satisfies all observable…
Recently, social phenomena have received a lot of attention not only from social scientists, but also from physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of complex system science. Opinion…
Mechanics can be founded in a principle stating the uncertainty in the position of an observable particle delta-q as a function of its motion relative to the observer, expressed in a trajectory representation . From this principle,…
We propose a fully probabilistic formulation of the notion of mechanistic interaction (interaction in some fundamental mechanistic sense) between the effects of putative (possibly continuous) causal factors A and B on a binary outcome…
The purpose of the dynamics of moving systems is to search for the mathematical model that describes the link between the resultant applied force, that is the cause, and the speed of system that is the effect. This mathematical link…
The Social Force Model is one of the most prominent models of pedestrian dynamics. As such naturally much discussion and criticism has spawned around it, some of which concerns the existence of oscillations in the movement of pedestrians.…
I contrast two possible attitudes towards a given branch of physics: as inferential (i.e., as concerned with an agent's ability to make predictions given finite information), and as dynamical (i.e., as concerned with the dynamical equations…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
The present review is based on the lectures that the author had been giving during several years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Being bounded by lecture frames, the selection of the material, by…
Common observations of the unpredictability of human behavior and the influence of one question on the answer to another suggest social science experiments are probabilistic and may be mutually incompatible with one another, characteristics…
The boundaries between physical and social networks have narrowed with the advent of the Internet and its pervasive platforms. This has given rise to a complex adaptive information ecosystem where individuals and machines compete for…
Statistical thermodynamics has a universal appeal that extends beyond molecular systems, and yet, as its tools are being transplanted to fields outside physics, the fundamental question, \textit{what is thermodynamics?}, has remained…
The Ising model, originally developed for understanding magnetic phase transitions, has become a cornerstone in the study of collective phenomena across diverse disciplines. In this review, we explore how Ising and Ising-like models have…
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
Extensive cooperation among unrelated individuals is unique to humans, who often sacrifice personal benefits for the common good and work together to achieve what they are unable to execute alone. The evolutionary success of our species is…
This essay provides a critical overview of the mathematical kinetic theory of active particles, which is used to model and study collective systems consisting of interacting living entities, such as those involved in behavior and evolution.…
Physics and economics are two disciplines that share the common challenge of linking microscopic and macroscopic behaviors. However, while physics is based on collective dynamics, economics is based on individual choices. This conceptual…
On the surface, behavioural science and physics seem to be two disparate fields of research. However, a closer examination of problems solved by them reveals that they are uniquely related to one another. Exemplified by the theories of…
The purpose of this paper is to present an idealized hypotheses-drawn model describing dynamics of variability in business and other social areas. A new construct is introduced called the Bayesian space of assessments to consider changes in…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…