A banner form the poster (Ѻ) for the 2014 German Physical Society’s annual Physics of Socio-Economic Systems symposium, which, in various years, has had speakers including: Duncan Watts (2015), Reiner Kummel (2015), Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron (2016), among others.

“To search for isomorphisms between social phenomena and physical phenomena is indeed an interesting idea. The real question, however, is whether or not it is a rewarding idea. It is interesting to suppose that there may be entities, social values, which play in social experience the same roles played by different forms of physical energy … But it is hard for me to sense how one can usefully assign quantitative measures to any significantly wide range of “values” in the social field. And when you link together such things as meaning, feeling, authority, and decision-making, this sounds to me like a very heterogeneous mixture.”

A banner for the 2002 ZiF SocioPhysics Conference, Germany, where Jurgen Mimkes talked on a Lagrangian derived free energy minimization formulation of social systems with chemical-modeled social bonds, Wolfgang Weidlich talked about sociodynamics of social systems, and Dietrich Stauffer talked about the Sznajd model.

“The aim of the international conference SocioPhysics was to provide an overview of different approaches to quantitative modeling and computer simulation of social systems that have been developed within the physics and the social sciences. The meeting thus made reference to an international science development, in the social sciences, computer science and natural sciences new form alliances: econophysics, socionics, computational economics are just a few examples. The German Physical Society (DPG) has now established a working group "Physics of socio-economic systems" (AKSOE). The great international interest in SocioPhysics proved the conference registrations from 18 different countries, including the United States and Brazil. The nearly 70 conference participants from very different disciplines (physics, mathematics, sociology, computer science, demography, philosophy, political science, economics) was presented in 27 lectures and 17 posters, a wide range of SocioPhysics concepts whose applications z. B. Decision Processes and voting behavior, collective opinion, include development of cooperation and of social networks. Considerable space occupied the partly controversial but also constructive discussions on whether and to what extent physical methods are applicable to the description of social systems. It became clear that it in no way comes to a simple transfer of physical concepts, but to provide an accurate understanding of the related reductions. As the various examples showed in the oral presentations and posters, SocioPhysics modeled less social actors with their complex worldview, but rather the dynamics of their collective interaction with analogies to physical many-body systems play a major role. So the question comes to the "reasonable" abstraction of social processes and the limits of the interpretation of the results of particular significance, which can only be clarified in interdisciplinary discourse. At the end, the participants agreed that the conference has made an important contribution to outline the possibilities and the limitations of a physical modeling of social processes. The multidisciplinary discussions and the lively atmosphere during the four days were here praised highly. The scientific director of the AG SocioPhysics would like to thank very warmly the ZiF for financial and organizational support for the implementation of the Convention.”

Logo of the Polish Physical Society, which hosts the annual “Physics in Economics and Social Sciences” (FENS) conference, the 7th meeting (Ѻ) taking place in 2014

“Since the 1980’s a revival of the mutual links between physics and economics, and other social sciences can be observed. Such concepts and ideas as scale-free networks, percolation, self-organizing criticality, and other non-linear models, or complex systems models have become research instruments in physics, evolutionary biology, economics, sociology, management, political science and security studies. Interchange of ideas between physics and social sciences is nothing new. In its origins economic theory is related to physics both as to a source of specific concepts, e.g. equilibrium and as a reference point of scientific validity. In return, some of economics-based ideas, e.g. the least action principle influenced understanding of laws of physics. Later, in the mid-20th century the impact of thermodynamics/statistical physics was visible in several discussions on principal ideas of economics — wealth, money, debt, and links between nature and human economic activities. The reinvigorated mutual impact of physics and social sciences in the end of the 20th century was caused by increasing awareness of physicists and social scientists that collective (social) phenomena cannot be described and explained solely with traditional instruments of statistics, econometrics and operational research. In addition, concepts drawn from broadly defined complexity studies allowing for modeling various systems composed of heterogeneous elements have become most rapidly developing methods of simulation of social and economic phenomena. Although a broad variety of applications of physics in economic and in social research are not yet formally institutionalized, the number of areas of studies, ideas and applications is increasing. It is reflected in publications on economics, sociology and finance in physical literature, and vice versa, the works earlier published but in physics journals can be found in publications devoted to economic and social issues. The terms “econophysics” and recently “sociophysics” are becoming recognized fields of contemporary science.”

Group photo of some of the speakers at UPESW 5 (29 Jun 2013): Constantin Bratianu (Thims' left), Libb Thims (Hu shirt), Daniel Pele (Thims’ back right), Mircea Gligor (Thims’ back left), and seated in front left to right: Ion Siman and Gheorghe Savoiu, all noted members of the Romanian school of physical socioeconomics.

A Serge Galam 30-31 Mar 2015 sociophysics workshop (Ѻ), at CEVIPOF, Paris, focused on applications to terrorism problems, run in coordination with economist Sacha Gironde and scientist Natasa Golo.

“The “Unexpected Conference” in Paris, November 14-16, 2011 brought together more than 35 researchers from Europe, North and South America, and Asia to present current research in the field of sociophysics. The final title of the conference “Sociophysics: Do humans behave like atoms?” reminded me of vivid debates between sociologists and physicists in the 90s in Germany in which sociologists obviously felt offended by books entitled “Quantitative sociology” that included many pages of rather complex Fokker-Planck equations. Serge Galam, organizer of this conference and a pioneer in the field, equally reported about the repelling reaction in some parts of the physics community at the beginning of the 80s, when the verdict ‘not suitable for publication’ branded his first thoughts about what we commonly call today sociophysics. The many different presentations encompassed mathematical analysis and comparison of non-linear models, but also applications for urban development (Jean-Pierre Nadal), wine markets (Tatiana Bouzdine Chameeva), and public debates (Alexandre Delanoe) to name a few examples. All presentations showed an unbroken interest in understanding social dynamics by means of concepts and mathematical models rooted in statistical physics and computer sciences. Computational sociology, and in particular the Agent-Based Models community, are nowadays well-appreciated sparring partners for physicists; philosophers (Kate Forbes-Pitt) and physicists (Franco Bagnoli) reflected about ontological and epistemological principles of a “complexity science”. The field has already long passed the stage of a niche for some eccentric pioneers. To the contrary, a variety of groups are working on similar questions, new generations are entering the field, and the activities across different branches of the rapidly growing science system are calling for means of integration and consolidations.”

Banners for the 2016 BPE + ISEE meeting.

See main: BPE 2016