Researchers are striving towards a physics of society

[GAspnes]

http://physicsweb.org/article/world/16/10/7

Take a look at any issue of a physical-sciences journal in the past five years and you will see one such field staking its claim vigorously. Physics is muscling its way into social science. Not content with explaining the behaviour of atoms and electrons, semiconductors, sand and space-time, physicists are now setting out to understand the behaviour of people.

<snip>

It is irrelevant whether traffic is driving down the A36 to Salisbury or the A5 autobahn to Basle because the same flow phases will appear for similar traffic densities. Such invariant properties are statistical: the peculiarities of individual drivers are subsumed within the average behaviour. That is precisely why the fashion for applying physics to social science has arisen largely within the community of statistical physicists, who have developed sophisticated tools for studying the behaviour of systems with a large number of components.

I find this idea fascinating, if a little chilling. I imagine less what we would do socially with such a science of mass behavior, and more what might happen in the way of commercial and political control.

On the upside, at least, if there is a method of control, there is also a method of resisting. Maybe.

[Silverhair]

1. Have you ever read Isaac Isamov?

[GAspnes]

2. y'mean Isaac Asimov?

Yup. Psycho-history & all that. The interesting difference is that was fiction, and this is science.

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

3. The question is,

what does it tell us about today's events?

One thing is clear, our fast food culture is following
the natural drift towards lowest energy. Americans are
in search of getting the most with expending the least,
be it money or physical energy. I think this will come
to a crashing halt once the rest of the world stops
funding our largesse and makes us pay our own way.