Social dynamics

Social dynamics means the ability of a society to react to inner and outer changes and also deals with its regulation mechanisms. It builds upon [systemics]]. Sociologists, ethnologists, economists, social psychologists, criminologists, anthropologists and biologists are utilizing it in their studies of systems and behavior.

Let me draw a wider picture: Society and culture are things that we are emotionally bound to and have no immediate alternative for. In effect, sociology is neither pure natural sciences nor pure humanities. It also is a near relative of psychology. So it is handicapped by the fact that the researcher is to understand the ways of own mind, is to rip into pieces himself and the bounds to his fellow man. Common embarressment and stall is likely to appear: Sociology and psychology have changed the world far less than natural sciences have. As all social structures including media are part of the research topic and don´t like to get stripped to the bones, bold sociologists have become relegated into politics.

Some people want to bring new life into that field by appling mathematics to sociology: On a certain level, life and societies are nothing more than systems dealing with culture respectivly genes. Therefore we can try to describe social systems by signals which become modified by transmission functions. This way the researcher isolates the research object and avoids to drift into diffuse interpretations. Even if immediate results of this approach are not revolutionary, it can serve as a training for media and education. Some examples follow.

If a society is small, its individuums can come to a fine consensus in a short time, that means that its amplitude error is small and its frequency bandwidth is high. But its absolute amplitude is small, so this society is still dependant from the big amplitude of nature, from the forces of nature. A big society can overcome hunger, disease and poverty, but its political media are hogs; high but lagged and distorted output signal.

More advanced examples introduce feedback, e.g. the cyclus between economic boom and recession, whose resonance frequency is mostly ~2-5 years. The strength of a resonance is measured by the parameter Q (for quality). Calculations become simplified by signal theory.

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