Abstract
The mathematical theories of social dynamics developed previously are deterministic and leave no room for the effects of single “exceptional” individuals. They all, however, lead to the existence of instability points and threshold phenomena. It is shown that in the neighborhood of such instability points, exceptional individuals, who appear rarely, can appreciablyadvance orretard the moment at which the instability is reached and at which a sudden change in the society occurs. Such individuals, however, do not eitherprevent orcause the instability, or the change, to occur. The indeterminacy introduced by “rare” individuals into the time course of social change is inversely proportional to the rate of social change.
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Literature
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Rashevsky, N. The role of the individual in social dynamics. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 22, 207–215 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02478007
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02478007