Related papers: Sociophysics: a personal testimony
Possible for science itself, conceptually, to have and will understand differently, let alone science also seen as technology, such as computer science. After all, science and technology are viewpoints diverse by either individual,…
How do shared conventions emerge in complex decentralized social systems? This question engages fields as diverse as linguistics, sociology and cognitive science. Previous empirical attempts to solve this puzzle all presuppose that formal…
In the present paper I want to tell of my impressions about the world of research in astrophysics, which I know from close observation. I see with certain pessimism the actual state of astrophysics, as well as of other sciences with similar…
In 1963-71, a group of people, myself included, formulated and perfected a new approach to physics problems, which eventually came to be known under the names of scaling, universality, and renormalization. This work formed the basis of a…
It is a commonplace perception that speed of time subjectively experienced by humans significantly differs from chronological (objective) time and shows a great deal of variability. An often cited example is the phenomenon of the time…
We review the possibilities and difficulties for statistical physicists if they apply their methods to biology, economics, or sociology.
Opinion dynamics, the study of how individual beliefs and collective public opinion evolve, is a fertile domain for applying statistical physics to complex social phenomena. Like physical systems, societies exhibit macroscopic regularities…
This opening editorial aims to interest researchers and encourage novel research in the closely related fields of sociophysics and computational social science. We briefly discuss challenges and possible research directions in the study of…
Over the last three decades, the human brain, and its role in determining behavior have been receiving a growing amount of attention in academia as well as in society more generally. Neuroscientific explanations of human behavior or other…
We discuss the problems of consensus and unity in science. The natural sciences seem to contrast with many other areas of endeavor in that a high level of consensus seems to exist in them. However, a careful analysis of the structure of…
In this editorial guide for the special issue on econophysics, we give a unique review of this young but quickly growing discipline. A suggestive taxonomy of the development is proposed by making a distinction between classical econophysics…
Studying how social contexts shape technology interactions and how we experience them is hard. One challenge is that social contexts are very dynamic and shaped by the situated practices of everyone involved. As a result, the same…
Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
This paper investigates the interactions between context and professional development of physics instructors in a case study of two physics faculty. A phenomenological-case study approach was used to analyze two physics faculty at different…
Physicists engage with the public to varying degrees at different stages of their careers. However, their public engagement covers many activities, events, and audiences, making their motivations and professional development needs not well…
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…
As a neuroscientist and a theoretical physicist, both working on time, we have decided to open a direct dialogue to examine if the apparent discrepancies regarding the nature of time can be composed.
As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information flow through…
A non-technical argument is presented that there is a link between the mind and the physical world in modern physics. Special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and other areas of physics are explored.…