
This is a new JHT peer review stage article, in the re-formatting and or re-constructionstage of development, about which: comments, suggestions, and or criticism are welcome, which can be submitted via: (a) the threads below, (b) comments added into the "this" wiki page, via the EasyEdit button, (c) attachment added to this page, via EasyEdit tools, (d) review posted externally, e.g. in beta wiki, WordPress, Blogger, your own website, etc., or (e) email comments sent to JHT editor Libb Thims directly via libbthims@gmail.com, which will be made public.

A social system, as a set of people, is considered as a set of human molecules contained in a system and social human behavior, called as ‘state’ of the social system, is modeled from a physico-chemical approach. On the universality of statistical physics, a social equation of state is derived and correlated to the degree of dissatisfaction and or satisfaction with the political, economic, cultural, and social rules of the given system. The social state equation is first presented for a hypothetical social system of non-interacting people. The terms social ‘pressure’, ‘freedom’, and ‘excitement’ are defined as a measure of different social rules, individual rights, and personal motivation, respectively. The proposed social state equation is then extended to real social systems containing interacting people. The human interactions are divided into two parts: the strong family interactions and average societal interactions. These interaction contributions to the proposed state equations have been considered based on a statistical thermodynamic approach. The proposed social state equation is then used to derive an expression for social entropy changes.

Author
Mohsen Mohsen-Nia
Email: moh.moh@cheme.caltech.edu
Thermodynamic Research Laboratory, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, USA

Received: 12 Apr 2012; Reviewed: 26 Dec 2012 - 29 May 2013; Published: 31 Dec 2013

Review period | Result
The main review period started 30 Apr 2013 and closed on 31 May 2013. The article was approved and published (pdf) on 31 Dec 2013.

Editorial issues

Formatting \| Other

Formatting | Other

Libb Thims | 20 Dec 2012 | Email

FQ1. Mohsen, I have re-formatted your article up to your equation 6, which does not match up with the formatted derivation equation 7 (see formatted PDF above). Please explain derivation step, below, further so that I can see what I am missing (20 Dec 2012) (fixed

@ 30 Apr 2013).

FQ2. Mohsen, please fill in N1 and N2, shown in formatted version (fixed

@ 30 Apr 2013).

Peer review

Reviews \| Review board \| Other

Reviews | Review board | Other

Curtis Blakely | 26 Dec 2012 | Email

Comments: "Just a few observations - first, I liked the paper and its position. The author’s observations are on target and he is absolutely correct in seeking a way to predict human behavior during periods of “stress” that are modeled on individual and collective characteristics. Predictable aggregate behavior based on normative personality and interaction would permit better response during natural disasters, riots, and other events where behavior becomes unusual.

While I am still working through the equations, and trying to apply them to some real-world events, any qualitative way to study behavior is certainly welcomed. A work of this nature has direct relevance to those of us that work in situations where stress is constant and situations are often artificial (i.e. prison, jail). While I remain unsure of how to measure social entropy, hypothetically, such a measure would be quite valuable. At times, the wording/phrasing used was a bit distracting – but considering that the article is being submitted from overseas, certainly understandable. Overall, an interesting and worthwhile undertaking."

Libb Thims | 30 Apr 2013 | Post

Comments: The article, overall, is good food for thought. A few salient difficulties on theory to be note are firstly that use of ideal gas law models generally tend to be only accurate when the particles obey the so-called Boltzmann chaos assumption, i.e. have non-correlated velocities. When particles begin to interact, such as in the formation of bond, as in the gas to liquid phase transition, one has to take into account.

These issues were grappled with by Johannes van der Waals, who started with German physicist Rudolf Clausius's 1864 version of the ideal gas law as:

$~ pv = RT ~$

where p is the pressure, v the volume, and T the absolute temperature of the body of non-interactive gas particles. In systems where either the pressure is increased, volume decreased, or temperature decreased, the gas can be turned into a liquid state, and the above equation becomes inapplicable. The system will be become a non-dilute aggregate of moving particles, interacting through inter-particle forces, and will fail to comply with Boyle’s law. These two effects, according to Van der Waals, can attributed to attraction between the particles, signified by a new constant “a”, and particle volume effects, signified by a new constant “b”, and thus the new vapor-approaching-liquid state of the body of particles can thus be quantified by the following equation:

$\left(p + \frac{a}{v^2}\right)\left(v-b\right) = RT$

$p = \frac{RT}{v-b} - \frac{a}{v^2} \,$

in its original formulation. In the human extrapolation, one must take into account "attraction between human molecules" (Henry Adams comes to mind here), the “a” constant factor in Van der Waals' formulation of approaching liquid state gas law. This gets into issues such as attraction to repulsion ratios (Gottman stability ratio), bond energy, exchange force theory, human chemical bonding theory, etc. Likewise, the particle volume effects, signified by a new constant “b”, in Van der Waals' formulation, of human molecules, of course is significant; this gets into topics such as human molecular orbital theory, e.g. how beautiful (and taller) people are given quantifiably more "volume" or social volume (e.g. personal space) in social interactions, and so on.

Also the use of Joule's second law (eq.16) and the Boltzmann constant k (eq. 9) are questionable applications to human social systems, though I can't necessarily give the disproof at this moment?

Kalyan Annamalai | 3 May 2013 | Email

Comment: “I briefly went over; it is an interesting proposition; after finals are over (May 13th), I will have another look at it.”

Stephen Ternyik | 6 May 2013 | Email

Comments: The Social Equation of State is applicable at the level of group dynamics in management science, i.e. human group behavior in firms, e.g. fluctuation of personnel; the approach is also suitable for co-operative group behavior in the armed forces (military science);asocial scientific extension would be feasible by collecting analogies to the empirical findings of experimental social psychology, e.g. group dynamical judgement processes.The limitations of statistical physics for social dynamics are discussed in the attached research paper from Prof. Graeme Snooks. [1] In any case, Dr. Mohsen-Nia made an important contribution for the methodical measurement of human group behavior.

Jeff Tuhtan | 6 May 2013 | Email

Comments: The article is well-written and touches on some new territory.

pg. 30: How does the time rate of change enter into the thermodynamic formulations which can be used to account for the societial redistribution of energy?

pg. 31: Can you elaborate some on the criteria required to allow for the simplification of the interacting components' characteristic factors into pseudo pure components? This seems like it may be a promising approach to apply to systems of large numbers of unique interacting entities.

pg. 34: The redefinition table appears to deviate from classical physics and approach an anthropomorphic view of interactions. For example, a closed system is not possible for any type of human-based system, since every individual must exchange matter in the form of gas, fluids, and solids with the surroundings. The volume as "freedom of movement" and temperature as "social excitement" seem to be substantial deviations from known physical quantities, how can they be measured using known techniques?

pg. 36: The discussion of entropy in terms of disorder of a society seems to fit well with the concept of temperature as a type of excitement. Can a society exchange heat via a type of "radiation"?

pg. 38: Under what conditions can the reference states be determined? Is there some form of "model society" needed?

Umberto Lucia | 8 May 2013 | Email

Comments: This paper is very interesting. I must underline only that the eq. (22) expresses an entropy variation, consequently it must be written as follows:

$\Delta S = C \ln \frac{T}{T_0} + R_S \ln \frac{V}{V_0} \,$

with T0 and V0 temperature and volume of the initial (or reference) state.

Robert Kenoun | 11 May 2013 | Email

Comments: This is a response to the article “social equation of state”

First, I have to confess that the idea that humans are molecules and their behavior can be described by the same simple equations that explain the behavior of gases is hard for me to digest. In the history of science and almost in any field we have not seen that an equation describes the behavior of subject matter in a wider range of physical parameters. Examples: Newton’s laws do not hold in atomic levels. Mass changes with speeds near speed of light. All the laws of physics will fail in higher gravitational field, in black hole, etc. etc. Now we are trying to use a very elementary Boyle’s gas law to explain the behavior of humans and societies. Not possible from my view. However, let us examine this equation of state.

When we write an equation and pick variables, dependent and independent, these variables must have units assigned to them. What is the unit of Social pressure, social freedom or social excitement? Are we expressing social pressure by the unit Pascal and what about others? We also know that the units on both sides of equation must equate. Do we have a unit for Rs in the equation of state and what is that?

Now, I am examining the equation by setting social freedom =0, whatever the unit. Social freedom being zero means that we are assuming absolutely no freedom to social system and consequently to any individual within the system. On the right side we have Rs≠0, therefore T=0, which means there is no social excitement. Well, as far as I know, in any society that there is no social freedom, social excitement is the highest to overthrow the government that restricts them and their society. Just recent examples, are Egypt, Libya and Syria and so on. How do we explain this?

If we replace the true physical quantities with some social quantities then what replaces the true physical quantities that social system can be affected by. Suppose the temperature of social systems’ environment rises to 160 degrees F, for some combination of reasons. Obviously, the social pressure, the social excitement will go up, but there is no dependence to the physical temperature. As this equation is written, it suggests that social system is immune to and independent of temperature rise or fall, which means that the social system is a non-physical system. We know that is not true because society and any other system built upon physical elements they are not immune to the changes in physical quantities. Therefore, any state equation for social system must still include the temperature and pressure and other physical quantities that affect the social system. This suggests that the state equation not only must keep its dependence on all physical quantities but on top of that it must have other variables defining the social excitement, social freedom and so on. Then that equation will no longer be Boyle’s equation.

I am also puzzled by, why social pressure is replacing the “physical pressure”? Is it because, in our vocabulary, we use the word pressure to express being under stress. If so, we have other expressions that use “energy” to express the same. For example: Stress drains one from energy. Being in love energizes a person. So, is it social pressure or social energy? Is it possible that social pressure may actually be a negative social energy that subtracts from the internal energy of the system? Or, any good thing that happens to a social system actually adds energy to the internal energy of the system.

If we want to build a theory for social change, social excitement or social evolution founded on thermodynamic equations, I am suggesting another way. But I am absolutely not sure how to put it together in a meaningful way, but it is different approach.

Here is Gibb’s free energy equation:

As you can see in this equation all the physical quantities still exist and we are not removing anything from the equation neither we replace the units. However, some of these physical quantities may become insignificant in affecting social changes. For example, in the special case: P is physical pressure and I take it as atmospheric pressure, and it has not changed in millions of years and we are well adapted to it. And it does not seem to affect our social evolution. Therefore, P=constant, dP=0.
Note that we have not undermined its importance and we have not removed or replaced this quantity.
What is V and how it applies to the society? Not quite sure and I have not put any thought into it.
T is the temperature and for all practical purposes its small variations between summer and winter temperatures does not affect the social developments, particularly, in regions above and below the equator, excluding the north and south poles. Therefore, although temperature still in the equation but for all practical purposes and for the temperatures tolerated by the humans and social systems T may be considered constant and dT=0.

V as a volume may not be applicable to social system, can we consider then dV=0?
It seems to me that the main things that are left here are S and U considering other variable stay at their current level until they significantly change. Like temperature goes up to 150 degrees of centigrade, water boils and social system across the globe perishes.

Is it possible that U is a more complex term for complex systems: U = U1 + U2 + U3 …… Un
U1, U2, …. Un can be either negative or positive each belong to a particular system level in the hierarchy of the system?

Could the units of happiness, prosperity, poverty, slavery all be defined in terms of energy and taken into account in the term U?

It seems to me that S is also of a complex form for complex systems, similar to U: S = S1 + S2 + …… Sn

When all taken into account, dG will have a value that would result in certain social behavior, similar to that of chemical reactions, when dG is negative, positive or zero. For different values of G we may have behaviors like: Revolution, keeping the status quo, progress and so on.

All of this may be bunch of non-sense. However, I wanted to share them with you, because I thought, may be, it was a better way or a different way, of explaining the social behavior.

Ion Siman | 29 May 2013 | Email

Comments:
THE PROBLEMS OF THE ARTICLE
How to identify a social equation of state?
How to do it in a reasonable manner from the point of view of physics models?

TWO MAJOR AFFIRMATIONS
A social equation of state inferred by analogy with the ideal gas equation of state
The analogy between physical parameters and social parameters

COMMENTS (ION IORGA SIMAN)
The analogy must consider the definition of an ideal gas by means of physical model and the ideal model of society (e.g. 1 mol gas = 6.023×1023 molecules but the contemporary world population = 7 or 8 ×109 inhabitants with a trend to 9 ×109 for the next four decades, and even so a great difference still remains =1014 How could the systems be compatible in order to make a real analogy?

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Exercises | Problems

Exercises \| Homework problems \| Other

Exercises | Homework problems | Other

On the wise protocol of Swedish physical chemist Sture Nordholm's penning of eight homework problems to his 1997 Journal of Chemical Education article “In Defense of Thermodynamics: an Animate Analogy”, the submitting author has provide (DATE) two homework problems and or exercises, shown below, that will be added to the finial version of the submitted article, if published:

● Problem #1: (add)

● Problem #2: (add)

JHT editor Libb Thims, in his university lectures to thermodynamics students, frequently assigns students the task to attempt to solve one of the problems on the Hmolpedia "homework problems" page; Thims also, down the road, may end up writing a Chemical Thermodynamics: with Applications in the Humanities textbook, built on Gilbert Lewis' famous 1923 Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances; some of these newly-proposed JHT end of article problems/exercises may find their way into the end of chapter exercises and or into the Hmolpedia homework problems page.

References
1. Snooks, Graeme D. (2007). “Self-organization or Self-creation? From Social Physics to Realist Dynamics” (abs), The Australian National University Centre for Economic Policy Research, Discussion Paper No. 546, Mar.