Related papers: Sociophysics: a personal testimony
The development of Econophysics is studied from the perspective of scientific communication networks. Papers in Econophysics published from 1992 to 2003 are collected. Then a weighted and directed network of scientific communication,…
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…
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…
Although information theory resolves inconsistencies (known under the form of famous enigmas) of the traditional approach of thermostatistics, its place in the corresponding literature is not what it deserves. This article supports the idea…
The paper outlines the historical development of spin in physics from about 1920 to the present day. It aims to provide the student with an accurate chronology of important developments, both scientific and technical.
Econophysics is an approach to quantitative economy using ideas, models, conceptual and computational methods of statistical physics. In recent years many of physical theories like theory of turbulence, scaling, random matrix theory or…
In this short report the first attempt of a new approach to the still mysterious phenomenon of the life, and its peak, the human being, is presented from the view point of the natural sciences, i.e. of the physics in the broad sense of the…
We review the developments of the statistical physics of fracture and earthquake over the last four decades. We argue that major progress has been made in this field and that the key concepts should now become integral part of the (under-)…
Some scientists take themselves and their work very seriously. However, there are plenty of cases of humour being combined with science. Here I review some examples from the broad fields of physics and astronomy, particularly focusing on…
We introduce here very briefly, through some selective choices of problems and through the sample computer simulation programs (following the request of the editor for this invited review in the Journal of Physics Through Computation), the…
I argue that research in physics operates under an implicit community philosophy, and I offer a definition I think physicists would accept, by and large. I compare this definition to what philosophers, sociologists, and historians of…
We develop a unified, dynamical-systems narrative of the universe that traces a continuous chain of structure formation from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies and their artificial learning systems. Rather than treating cosmology,…
{G}{ustav} Fechner's 1860 delineation of psychophysics, the measurement of sensation in relation to its stimulus, is widely considered to be the advent of modern psychological science. In psychophysics, a researcher parametrically varies…
The psychology of science is the least developed member of the family of science studies. It is growing, however, increasingly into a promising discipline. After a very brief review of this emerging sub-field of psychology, we call for it…
The beliefs of physicists can bias their results towards their expectations in a number of ways. We survey a variety of historical cases of expectation bias in observations, experiments, and calculations.
Social engineering attacks are phenomena that are equally applicable to both the physical world and cyberspace. These attacks in the physical world have been studied for a much longer time than their counterpart in cyberspace. This…
While I was dealing with a brain injury and finding it difficult to work, two friends (Derek Westen, a friend of the KITP, and Steve Shenker, with whom I was recently collaborating), suggested that a new direction might be good. Steve in…
Metaphysics is the science of being and asks the question ``What really exists?'' The answer to this question has been sought for by mankind since the beginning of recorded time. In the past 2500 years there have been many answers to this…
This editorial opens the special issues that the Journal of Statistical Physics has dedicated to the growing field of statistical physics modeling of social dynamics. The issues include contributions from physicists and social scientists,…
Econophysics is a new area developed recently by the cooperation between economists, mathematicians and physicists. It's not a tool to predict future prices of stocks and exchange rates. It applies idea, method and models in Statistical…