How can we apply the second law of thermodynamics to human societies? How can entropy (ie dissipation of energy and/or increase in disorder) be factored in when examining deterioration, change, oscillation, mutation in social or political systems? Do economics help?
It is tempting to transfer the second law to other sciences, its popularized formulation "everything gets more chaotic all the time if no additional work is invested"* sounds catchy for all sorts of situations, starting from an office desk to a town marketplace after new year's eve up to the democratic system of an entire country.
Another bridge from thermodynamics to another discipline has been built to IT where you find the concept of Shannon's information entropy. Here you find many equations that are almost identical with the exception of the Boltzmann factor kB, so we can name the phenomena identically, but we should always keep in mind not to confuse the stored information and the physical processes.
Now, back to describing humans. There are phenomena in human behaviour for which we can use phenomena based on pseudo-thermodynamic equations. An entertaining example would be dance behaviour in Moshpits:
Article Collective Motion of Humans in Mosh and Circle Pits at Heavy...
Here, the Boltzmann distribution which is derived building on the maximization of entropy and thus the second law, could be applied successfully. However, we should always question: is this an actual consequence of the second law of thermodynamics or do we just have two phenomena which can be described by the same equation? I have no doubt that for sociological data you will find such cases, but I would be hesitant about a statement of the form "humans do this because of the second law of thermodynamics".
* No need to tell me that this isn't an accurate formulation of the law, I know that.
Thank you for your well informed response.
First of all we we should define the object. Flocking of individuals or institutional structure, or both?
Entropy apply to both, but in different ways.
I shall mull on your suggestions, for which I am grateful.
Charles
Here is what I tentatively think: interpersonal relations oscillate and vanish (dissipate). Institutional structures oscillate and break.
Are there any similar phenomena in the physical world?
Charles
Suppose that a social institutional structure is a solid state and that interpersonal relations is a semi solid (liquid crystal) state, what are the laws of transformation?
About your second question: the fluctuation-dissipation theorem is a major point in statistical mechanics which allows for making the context between the microscopic (atomistic) world and macroscopic thermodynamic and kinetic quantities.
The basic statement is roughly, that a system's reaction towards a small external perturbation is the same as that towards regular internal fluctuations. The accurate mathematical formulation can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuation-dissipation_theorem#General_formulation
Now, I don't know enough about state-of-the-art humanities in that respect, but I would expect that there are societal statistics for which you could set up a similar relationship, although I would also hesitate to say for such a case that "humans behave like that because of thermodynamics".
If I have an idea about your other two questions, I'll check in again.
Thank you for your explanation. It is important for me, a social scientist, to understand physics. I do not think that the social sciences have arrived at a sufficient theoretical point so as to translate laws of physics into laws of social behaviour, or the other way around. For the time being I am looking at certain aspects of physics that may look similar to social phenomena. "Looking similar" is not an explanation, but a way for the mind to possibly discover hidden properties of social structures.
To follow up on our conversation (if it does not not seem to you as boring and senseless) I have come across the concept of NESS (non equilibrium steady systems). This seems apposite to describe a community where there is no power (id anarchic), but endowed with a steady continuity. Again the physics are more like a metaphor rather like an explanation. The connection between physics and human aggregates pertains to a kind of mathematical logic. Or not?
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