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Social Processes, Physical Models of

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Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

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 \( { s=+1 } \) or \( { s=-1 } \); physicists call them spins. The interactions are often expressed usinga cost function, which...

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Abbreviations

Absorbing state:

In a stochastic process, a state from which there is no way out. Once the system reaches the absorbing state, it stays there forever.

Complete graph:

A graph where every pair of vertices is connected by an edge.

Configuration space:

The ensemble of all allowed states (configurations) a model system can reach. Any point in configuration space represents one such state.

Graph:

an assembly of points (vertices), some of which are connected by lines (edges).

Hypercubic lattice:

A generalization of a rectangular plane mesh; a graph embedded in a space of arbitrary dimensionality d. Assuming rectangular coordinates \( { x_1, x_2,\ldots, x_d } \), the coordinates of the vertices in a hypercubic lattice are all whole numbers.

Markov process:

A special type of stochastic process. In a Markov process the system changes its state randomly and, most importantly, the changes of state are independent of history. A Markov process is a memoryless system.

Random walk:

A stochastic process describing hops of a particle to randomly chosen neighbor sites on a lattice.

Stochastic process:

A sequence of random events. At each time t, which may be either discrete (\( { t=1,2 } \), etc.) or continuous, a new random variable is introduced representing the outcome of the process in that time. Also called a random process.

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Acknowledgments

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

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic

    František Slanina

  2. Center for Theoretical Study, Prague, Czech Republic

    František Slanina

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  1. RAMTECH LIMITED, 122 Escalle Lane, Larkspur, CA, 94939, USA

    Robert A. Meyers Ph. D. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

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Slanina, F. (2009). Social Processes, Physical Models of. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_499

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