Why Society is a Complex Matter Meeting Twenty-first Century Challenges with a New Kind of Science /

• Main Author: Ball, Philip (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg : Imprint: Springer, 2012.
• Edition: 1.
• Subjects: Physics.; Application software.; Sociophysics.; Econophysics.; Complexity, Computational.; Economics.; Social sciences.; Communication.; Socio- and Econophysics, Population and Evolutionary Models.; Methodology of the Social Sciences.; Complexity.; Computer Appl. in Social and Behavioral Sciences.; Economic Systems.; Communication Studies.

Society is complicated. But this book argues that this does not place it beyond the reach of a science that can help to explain and perhaps even to predict social behaviour. As a system made up of many interacting agents – people, groups, institutions and governments, as well as physical and technol...

Table of Contents:

• Society: a Complex Problem
•   On the Road: Predicting traffic
•  Every Move You Make: Patterns of crowd movement
• Making Your Mind Up: Norms and decisions
•   Broken Windows: The spread and control of crime
• The Social Web: Networks and their failures.-   Spreading It Around: Mobility, disease and epidemics
• After the Crash: Economic and financial systems
•   Love Thy Neighbour: How to foster cooperation
• Living Cities: Urban development as a complex system
• The Transformation of War: Modelling modern conflict
• Towards a Living Earth Simulator: The FuturICT Project.