On religion and language evolutions seen through mathematical and agent based models

(shortened version) Religions and languages are social variables, like age, sex, wealth or political opinions, to be studied like any other organizational parameter. In fact, religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of populations. Languages are also a characteristics of the human kind. New religions, new languages appear though others disappear. All religions and languages evolve when they adapt to the society developments. On the other hand, the number of adherents of a given religion, the number of persons speaking a language is not fixed. Several questions can be raised. E.g. from a macroscopic point of view : How many religions/languages exist at a given time? What is their distribution? What is their life time? How do they evolve?. From a microscopic view point: can one invent agent based models to describe macroscopic aspects? Does it exist simple evolution equations? It is intuitively accepted, but also found through from statistical analysis of the frequency distribution that an attachment process is the primary cause of the distribution evolution : usually the initial religion/language is that of the mother. Later on, changes can occur either due to heterogeneous agent interaction processes or due to external field constraints, - or both. Such cases can be illustrated with historical facts and data. It is stressed that characteristic time scales are different, and recalled that external fields are very relevant in the case of religions, rending the study more interesting within a mechanistic approach

[1]  C. Wilke,et al.  Simple model of evolution with variable system size , 1997, physics/9705008.

[2]  Ing Ren Tsang,et al.  Theoretical model for the evolution of the linguistic diversity , 2005, physics/0505197.

[3]  D. Stauffer.  Introduction to statistical physics outside physics , 2003, cond-mat/0310037.

[4]  T. Sluckin,et al.  Modelling Paleoindian dispersals , 1998 .

[5]  Oz Shy.  Dynamic Models of Religious Conformity and Conversion: Theory and Calibrations , 2005 .

[6]  M. Afzal Upal,et al.  Simulating the Emergence of New Religious Movements , 2005, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul..

[7]  D. Dennett.  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , 2006 .

[8]  M. Ausloos,et al.  Magnetic kinetic growth models , 1995 .

[9]  M. Ausloos,et al.  Cluster structure of EU-15 countries derived from the correlation matrix analysis of macroeconomic index fluctuations , 2006 .

[10]  David Gil,et al.  The World Atlas of Language Structures , 2005 .

[11]  L. Iannaccone,et al.  Introduction to the Economics of Religion , 1998 .

[12]  Johanna Nichols,et al.  Diversity and Stability in Language , 2008 .

[13]  Mike Reeve,et al.  The Information Society as a Complex System , 2000, J. Univers. Comput. Sci..

[14]  James W. Minett,et al.  Modelling endangered languages: The effects of bilingualism and social structure , 2008 .

[15]  Emmanuel Haven,et al.  Quantum mechanics and violations of the sure-thing principle: The use of probability interference and other concepts , 2009 .

[16]  mile .QDurkheim mile Durkheim,et al.  The Elementary Forms of Religious Life , 1916 .

[17]  M. Ruhlen.  A Guide to the World’s Languages , 1987 .

[18]  J. Diamond.  The third chimpanzee : the evolution and future of the human animal , 1992 .

[19]  David P. Landau,et al.  Phase transitions and critical phenomena , 1989, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[20]  M. Ausloos,et al.  Simulations of the kinetic growth of YBa2Cu3O7 − δ grains , 1996 .

[21]  Paul Ormerod,et al.  The Medieval inquisition: scale-free networks and the suppression of heresy , 2004 .

[22]  Erika Fille Legara,et al.  COMPETITION IN A SOCIAL STRUCTURE , 2009 .

[23]  Marcel Ausloos,et al.  On the genre-fication of music: a percolation approach , 2005, ArXiv.

[24]  C. Zuckerman.  On the Date of the Khazars' Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor. A Study of the Anonymous Khazar Letter from the Genizah of Cairo , 1995 .

[25]  E. Durkheim,et al.  Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse , 1991 .

[26]  Douglas Biber,et al.  Variation among University Spoken and Written Registers: A New Multi-Dimensional Analysis , 2003 .

[27]  T. Johnson,et al.  World Christian Trends, Ad 30-Ad 2200 : Interpreting the Annual Christian Megacensus , 2013 .

[28]  Sarah L. Nesbeitt.  Ethnologue: Languages of the World , 1999 .

[29]  M Ausloos,et al.  Uncovering collective listening habits and music genres in bipartite networks. , 2005, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[30]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  Competition of languages in the presence of a barrier , 2007, physics/0702031.

[31]  C. Herteliu.  Statistical Indicators System regarding Religious Phenomena , 2010 .

[32]  Mircea Eliade,et al.  A history of religious ideas , 1986 .

[33]  P. Verhulst.  Recherches mathématiques sur la loi d’accroissement de la population , 1845, Nouveaux mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences et belles-lettres de Bruxelles.

[34]  Geoffrey W. Sutton.  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , 2009 .

[35]  P ? ? ? ? ? ? ? % ? ? ? ? , 1991 .

[36]  Marcel Ausloos,et al.  Convergence and cluster structures in EU area according to fluctuations in macroeconomic indices , 2008 .

[37]  Marcel Ausloos,et al.  Statistical dynamics of religions and adherents , 2007 .

[38]  Sverker Johansson,et al.  Origins of Language: Constraints on hypotheses , 2005 .

[39]  D. Stauffer,et al.  Birth, survival and death of languages by Monte Carlo simulation , 2007 .

[40]  Joseph H. Greenberg,et al.  Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements , 1990, On Language.

[41]  D. Dubuisson.  The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology , 2003 .

[42]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  A computer simulation of language families1 , 2007, Journal of Linguistics.

[43]  Ramon Ferrer i Cancho,et al.  The small world of human language , 2001, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[44]  A. Gadomski.  Stretched Exponential Kinetics of the Pressure Induced Hydration of Model Lipid Membranes. A Possible Scenario , 1996 .

[45]  Søren Wichmann,et al.  On the power-law distribution of language family sizes , 2005, Journal of Linguistics.

[46]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  Microscopic and macroscopic simulation of competition between languages , 2005 .

[47]  Christian Schulze,et al.  Computer Simulation of Language Competition by Physicists , 2006 .

[48]  Albert,et al.  Emergence of scaling in random networks , 1999, Science.

[49]  Marcel Ausloos,et al.  Clusters in weighted macroeconomic networks: the EU case. Introducing the overlapping index of GDP/capita fluctuation correlations , 2007, 0710.5447.

[50]  Marcel Ausloos,et al.  Organizational and dynamical aspects of a small network with two distinct communities: Neo-creationists vs. Evolution Defenders , 2008, Scientometrics.

[51]  Caroline M. Eastman,et al.  Comparative lexical analysis of FORTRAN code, code comments and English text , 1980, ACM-SE 18.

[52]  Filippo Petroni,et al.  Language distance and tree reconstruction , 2008 .

[53]  K. Sznajd-Weron.  Instabilities in population dynamics , 2000 .

[54]  Juergen Mimkes.  A Thermodynamic Formulation of Social Science , 2006 .

[55]  James W. Minett,et al.  Vertical and horizontal transmission in language evolution , 2005 .

[56]  J. Hayward.  Mathematical modeling of church growth , 1999 .

[57]  Nikolay K. Vitanov,et al.  Influence of adaptation on the nonlinear dynamics of a system of competing populations , 2000 .

[58]  R. S. Mendes,et al.  Universal features in the growth dynamics of religious activities. , 2008, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[59]  Aaas News,et al.  Book Reviews , 1893, Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal.

[60]  C. Kirk Hadaway,et al.  World Christian Encyclopedia , 2013 .

[61]  M. Serva,et al.  Indo-European languages tree by Levenshtein distance , 2007, 0708.2971.

[62]  Mike Thelwall,et al.  Language evolution and the spread of ideas on the Web: A procedure for identifying emergent hybrid word family members , 2006, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[63]  Emmanuel Haven,et al.  Private Information and the ‘Information Function’: A Survey of Possible Uses , 2008 .

[64]  J. Steele,et al.  Evolutionary ecology of spoken language: Co-evolutionary hypotheses are testable , 2002, World archaeology.

[65]  Holger Kantz,et al.  On the trap of extinction and its elimination , 2006 .

[66]  G. E. Swanson.  The Birth of the Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs , 1964 .

[67]  Lyle Campbell,et al.  Historical Linguistics: An Introduction , 1991 .

[68]  W. Strange.  Evolution of language. , 1984, JAMA.

[69]  M. Ausloos,et al.  On World Religion Adherence Distribution Evolution , 2008, 0801.1010.

[70]  S. Strogatz,et al.  Linguistics: Modelling the dynamics of language death , 2003, Nature.

[71]  S N Dorogovtsev,et al.  Language as an evolving word web , 2001, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[72]  E. Garst,et al.  Birth , 1954 .

[73]  Damián H. Zanette.  Self-Similarity in the Taxonomic Classification of Human Languages , 2001, Adv. Complex Syst..

[74]  M. Eliade,et al.  History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries , 1979 .

[75]  D. Zanette,et al.  Vertical transmission of culture and the distribution of family names. , 2000, nlin/0009046.

[76]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  वाक्यविन्यास का सैद्धान्तिक पक्ष = Aspects of the theory of syntax , 1965 .

[77]  M. Ausloos,et al.  Risk of population extinction from periodic and abrupt changes of environment , 2008, 0801.0981.

[78]  J. W. Minett,et al.  The invasion of language: emergence, change and death. , 2005, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[79]  J. Hayward.  A General Model of Church Growth and Decline , 2005 .