Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

2009 Edition
| Editors: Robert A. Meyers (Editor-in-Chief)

Social Processes, Physical Models of

  • František Slanina
Reference work entry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_499
How to cite

Definition of the Subject

Modeling social phenomena as if they were manifestations of mutual interactions of physical objects is the ultimate goal of the reductionistapproach to reality. Both the inanimate and animate worlds, including all the behavior of humans, would be traced back to the properties of atoms andmolecules. This program is absolutely unrealizable, though. On the other hand, the discipline of sociophysics tries to bypass the brute-force approach by developing schematically effective models which aim atdescribing reality at a “macroscopic”, rather than microscopic, level.

For example, when one wants to model the behavior of a large assembly of humans facing the necessity of choosing between two options, it iscustomary to neglect all details of the behavior of the people involved and describe their states by two-value quantities, such as \( { s=+1 } \)

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Notes

Acknowledgments

The original results in this article were obtained within the projects AVOZ10100520 and MSM0021620845.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  • František Slanina
    • 1
    • 2
  1. 1.Institute of PhysicsAcademy of Sciences of the Czech RepublicPragueCzech Republic
  2. 2.Center for Theoretical StudyPragueCzech Republic