Approach to a Quantitative Description of Social Systems Based on Thermodynamic Formalism

I ns tiu e of S c al Sc e ces I vo Pilar, Marulice rg 19/1, Zagreb, CrE-mail: Mislav.Stjepan.Zebec@ipdi.hr and Kreso.Perackovic@ipdi.hrReceived: 11 February 2000 / Accepted: 14 July 2000 / Published: 28 July 2000Abstract: Certain statistical aspects of social systems are described by appropriately definedquantities named social potentials. Relations between social potentials are postulated bydrawing an analogy with thermodynamics relations between thermodynamic potentials, thusobtaining a toy model of some of the statistical properties of social systems. Within thismodel, an interpretation of a socially relevant acting (acting as opposed to action, see ref.[1]) that does not invoke structural changes in social systems, is given in terms of social po-tentials.Keywords: social systems theory, thermodynamics, social potentials, entropy and tempera-ture of social systems.IntroductionStudy of social systems requires the application of statistical methods to their description and givesresults of social system research in terms of statistical data. The existence of rich statistics usually, butnot necessarily, implies some underlying structure or even dynamics. Bearing in mind the very conceptof social systems, it is reasonable to assume the existence of some sort of dynamics describing socialsystems that leads to the observed statistics. The present level of knowledge of a quantitative descrip-tion of social systems [2] implies that the formulation of complete and consistent theory is a formidabletask.