Sociophysics

This book attempts to explain why and how humans behave much like atoms in some aspects of their collective lives. The authors then suggest ways that this knowledge could serve as the key to a dramatic leap forwards in social freedom in the real world.

Global Physics: Modeling of Sociopolitical Phenomena applies the physics of disorder as it is known in solid-state physics methodically to sociopolitical issues of the 21st century. Topics covered include: Voting in Hierarchical Systems, A Model to Opinion Forming, Going to Innovation, Behavior and Geometry, Group Decision Making, Coalitions Forming and Fragmentation, Terrorism and Percolation Theory. This book uses physical principles to help the reader to better understand complex phenomena during the globalization process.

The first book ever that explains the field of sociophysics, written by its founding father Demonstrates the value of applying methods in physics for the modeling of social and political phenomena Presents convincing examples with correct predictions of collective human behavior Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Serge Galam is a theoretical physicist specialized in disordered systems with doctorate degrees from Paris and Tel-Aviv. After being a research associate at the City College of New York and an assistant professor at New York University, he joined the CNRS in Paris where he is currently working at the Research Center in Applied Epistemology at the 'Ecole Polytechnique. He is the proud father of sociophysics, a new field of study that he envisioned and initiated more than thirty years ago.

He has authored over 120 research papers in the best international journals, three books, over 60 popular articles and 30 book chapters and given about 300 talks throughout the world.

Inhalt
Part 1: Sociophysics: setting the frame.- What is sociophysics about?.- The question: do humans behave like atoms?.- Sociophysics: the origins.- Sociophysics: weaknesses, achievements and challenges.- Part II: Discovering the wonderful (and maybe scary) world of Sociophysics.- Sociophysics: an overview of emblematic founding models.- Universal features of group decision making.- The dictatorship paradox of democratic bottom-up voting.- The dynamics of spontaneous coalition-fragmentation versus global coalitions.- Terrorism and the percolation of passive supporters.- The modeling of opinion dynamics.- By way of caution.- Part III: Democratic voting in bottom-up hierarchical structures: from advantages and setbacks to dictatorship paradoxes.- Highlights of the Part.- Basic mechanisms for the perfect democratic structure.- Going to applications.- Touching on a fundamental aspect of nature, both physical and human.- Dictatorship paradoxes of Democratic voting in hierarchical structures.- Part IV: The risky business of alliances in bottom-up democratic voting with three-choice competition.- Bottom-up democratic voting in a three-choice competition.- So sorry, that's the end of the tour!.- I thank you.