Abstract
Unification of natural science and social science is a centuries-old, unmitigated debate. Natural science has a chronological advantage over social science because the latter took time to include many social phenomena in its fold. History of science witnessed quite a number of efforts by social scientists to fit this discipline in a rational if not mathematical framework. On the other hand a tendency among some physicists has been observed especially since the last century to recast a number of social phenomena in the mould of events taking place in physical world and governed by well-known systems and equations of physics. It necessitated the introduction of social physics as a new inter-disciplinary subject. Obviously this attempt is aimed at explaining hitherto unsolved or highly debated issues of social science. Physicists are showing special interest on problems on economics, ranging from some topics of normative economics to the movement of prices of derivatives. Statistics has been widely used in these attempts and at least two sub-disciplines of the subject, namely, stochastic process and time series analysis deserve special mention. All these research activities gave birth to another inter-disciplinary subject named as econophysics. Interestingly, global financial crisis of 2007–08 has revived the need of determination of prices of derivatives in a more accurate manner. This article adumbrates a sketch of the theoretical synthesis between physics and economics and the role played by statistics in this process.
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Notes
Just after his first marriage in December, 1894.
To be noted here that both Marx and Russell surmounted Hegelian spell in their later lives but their points of departure were altogether different and discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this article.
This dual position of Hayek as described by Hutchison has been contradicted by Scheall (2015).
Here the term ‘degrees of freedom’ is used as a concept in physics. Statistics borrows this and some other terms like ‘moments’, ‘entropy’ from physics and uses them with appropriate change of connotation.
Astronomy, in spite of being a non-social science, suffers from the same deficiency but the reason is different. Periodicity, if at all, of recurrence of celestial phenomena is abnormally low.
Quite a number of models are in vogue in cosmology and the subject is, chiefly owing to observational obstacle, not at all free from speculation; fortunately this example is free from any such hindrance.
The statistical connotation of the word random is not the same as the English phrase ‘at random’. The distinction between a variable and a random variable is that random variable assumes a value (or value within an interval, if the case is continuous) with specific probability whereas there is no concept of specific probability attached with a variable. Thus a specific probability is glued to the idea of a random variable and the inability of a computer to generate truly random number is an extension of this anomaly.
To be mentioned here that in stochastic process it is not strictly t always; it may be some other incremental variable like number of agents (n).
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Bhattacharyya, S. A small step towards unification of economics and physics. Mind Soc 20, 69–84 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-020-00264-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-020-00264-y