The Mathematics of Social Processes

Abstract

As I intend to translate the considerations of the last chapters into mathematical models, it seems appropriate to make some preliminary remarks about the specific concept of mathematical models I shall introduce. The main reason for these preambles is the fact that there are a lot of misunderstandings in social sciences when someone is speaking in terms of mathematics. That is not only due to the tradition of social theory, which is by and large an unmathematical one. It is also due to certain developments in the last decades, in particular to the emergence of mathematical models that have not much to do with the traditional tools of mathematical physics and strongly rely on their implementation into computer programs, i.e. they are validated by computer simulations. In 1.2. I already mentioned the Boolean networks (BNs) used and investigated by Kauffman, which can be seen as a paradigm for the new mathematical approaches to biological or social complexity.