Approach to a Quantitative Description of Social Systems Based on Thermodynamic Formalism

Josip Stepanic,Kresimir Perackovic,Mislav Stjepan Zebec,Hrvoje Stefancic

doi:10.3390/e2030098

Josip Stepanic, Kresimir Perackovic + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/e2030098

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Abstract

Certain statistical aspects of social systems are described by appropriately defined quantities named social potentials. Relations between social potentials are postulated by drawing an analogy with thermodynamics relations between thermodynamic potentials, thus obtaining a toy model of some of the statistical properties of social systems. Within this model, an interpretation of a socially relevant acting (acting as opposed to action, see ref. [1]) that does not invoke structural changes in social systems, is given in terms of social po-tentials.

Highlights

Study of social systems requires the application of statistical methods to their description and gives results of social system research in terms of statistical data
In order to establish a connection between social systems and thermodynamic formalism as clearly as possible, we present only selected parts of social systems theory and thermodynamics
The article is organized as follows: we extract the necessary aspects of social systems, while in the third section we present some characteristics of thermodynamics

Summary

Introduction

Study of social systems requires the application of statistical methods to their description and gives results of social system research in terms of statistical data. In this paper we concentrate on certain characteristics of social systems and present a toy model that makes possible their quantitative description. In this model we use only selected concepts of thermodynamic formalism and apply them to suitably defined characteristics of social systems. For this reason in this article we extract and discuss part of possible foundations for further social systems modeling, based on thermodynamics.

Results

Conclusion