Physics of society

I have just started reading Philip Ball’s 2004 book “Critical Mass”. I intend to eventually give here a more detailed account of this book, but the few chapters I’ve read up to now have already prompted me to write this comment.

The book is basically about how the insights and tools of physics can be used to investigate phenomena occurring at the scale of human society (group behaviour, traffic, financial markets, business networking, etc.). The sub-field of physics involved here is statictical mechanics (many-body interactions), as well as the more recent notions of collective behaviour, complexity, emergence, etc. In short, the book makes the point that a “physics of society” truly exists.

This impelled me to revisit a rather bold statement I made here a few months ago, to the effect that physics is no longer the central science, having been replaced by biology in this position. My point then was that, contrary to physics, the results of biological research are more relevant to people, that biology is science at the human scale. The notion of a physics of society now requires a more qualified statement: some of physics is at the human scale. It is still true that biology currently ranks high among people’s concerns, in the media, and in the bodies that fund research. But physics is not only about smashing tiny particles in big accelerators, or about mind-boggling phenomena occurring on an astronomical scale. Physics is also about people.