Related papers: Sociophysics: a personal testimony
Cosmoparticle physics is the natural result of development of mutual relationship between cosmology and particle physics. Its prospects offer the way to study the theory of everything and the true history of the Universe, based on it, in…
Subjective Experience (SE) is part of the ancient mind-body problem, which continues to be one of deepest mysteries of science. Despite major advances in many fields, there is still no plausible causal link between SE and its realization in…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
This contribution aims to give an overview of the historical context of neutrino physics. I will present the strong social trends that shaped physics and the way physicists worked, along the 20th century. First, we will see the background…
Are symmetries discovered or rather invented by humans ? The stand you may take firmly here reveals a lot of your epistemological position. Conversely, the arguments you may forge for answering to this question, or to one of its numerous…
This paper debates the contribution of Econophysics to the economic or financial domains. Since the traditional approach performed by Economics or Finance has revealed to be insufficient in fully characterizing and explaining the…
This is an attempt to illustrate the glorious history of logical foundations and to discuss the uncertain future.
The paper discusses the fundamental characteristics distinguishing the natural and social systems from each other. It considers in detail the basic approaches, prospects, and possibilities of constructing mathematical description for social…
Seismology has several features that suggest it is a highly internationalized field: the subject matter is global, the tools used to analyse seismic waves are dependent upon information technologies, and governments are interested in…
It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would…
Defining interdisciplinary physics today requires first a reformulation of what is physics today, which in turn calls for clarifying what makes a physicist. This assessment results from my forty year journey arguing and fighting to build…
This reviews the econophysics activities in Belgium from my admittedly biased point of view. Unknown historical notes or facts are presented for the first time explaining the aims, whence evolution of the research papers and friendly…
Methods of statistical physics have proven valuable for studying the evolution of cooperation in social dilemma games. However, recent empirical research shows that cooperative behavior in social dilemmas is only one kind of a more general…
The present discussion concerning certain fundamental physical theories (such as string theory and multiverse cosmology) has reopened the demarcation problem between science and non-science. While parts of the physics community see the…
Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information…
There is a science of science and an informal economics of economics, but there is not a cohesive sociology of sociology. We turn the central findings and theoretical lenses of the sociological tradition and the sociological study 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…
Some personal reflections on the past and future of "econophysics", to appear in Europhysics News
Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended…
On the occasion of the celebration of the first half-century of Yang--Mills theories, I am contributing a personal recollection of how the subject, in its early times, confronted physical reality, that is, its "phenomenology". There is…