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Physics of humans, physics for society

Nature Physics volume 14, page 870 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Today, the massive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has made it possible to attach a traceable set of data to almost any person. We argue that these data provide the opportunity to build a ‘physics of society’: describing a society — composed of many interacting heterogeneous entities (people, businesses, institutions) — as a physical system. While important ethical implications have to be taken into account, the benefits in developing such physics of society would be tremendous. Indeed, it could help understanding, anticipating and forecasting future societal trends and human behavioural responses, and their associated uncertainty1; or address societal challenges in which globally networked risks play a role2,3. A case in point is modern epidemiology and its success in predicting the large-scale spreading of infectious diseases4.

The development of such a physics of society wouldn’t be a bed of roses though. Humans are not molecules of an ideal gas. In the context of social dynamics, we don’t understand yet whether ‘Newtonian’ laws exist for individuals. It is also unclear how many and which quantities would be needed for determining and anticipating a given macroscopic, in the sense of collective, observable. People have also the capacity to adapt, adding a degree of uncertainty or variability that cannot be neglected in many challenging problems, like the spreading of diseases. This means that the basic quantities we should work with must come from behavioural data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scuola IMT, Lucca, Italy

    Guido Caldarelli

  2. Institute of Complex Systems, CNR, Rome, Italy

    Guido Caldarelli

  3. ECLT, Venice, Italy

    Guido Caldarelli

  4. Global Climate Forum, Berlin, Germany

    Sarah Wolf

  5. Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Yamir Moreno

  6. ISI Foundation, Turin, Italy

    Yamir Moreno

Authors
  1. Guido Caldarelli
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  2. Sarah Wolf
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  3. Yamir Moreno
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guido Caldarelli.

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Caldarelli, G., Wolf, S. & Moreno, Y. Physics of humans, physics for society. Nature Phys 14, 870 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0266-x

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