Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
Further , despite the significant upheavals in economics of late , the science has been extremely useful all these years . Complexity science offers new perspectives , new ways to understand what ’ s been going on , and new avenues for research . For example , Stiglitz ( 2015 ) has likened both the adjustment of the Great Recession and that of the Great Depression to a phase change in the economy . Now this begs the question of how one defines a phase change in social systems , but Stiglitz ’ description certainly makes sense . The latter phase change was from an agricultural to an industrial economy , and the former was from an industrial to an information-based economy . Both necessitated structural changes and major adjustments to the size of the labor force . Does that mean that phase diagrams like those drawn for water , for example , can be drawn for social systems ? That would be an amazingly powerful policy tool ! What system parameters are involved in the ramp up to a phase change ? In water , they are temperature , pressure , and volume . Are we looking for analogs to these parameters in social systems , or something completely different . And do we expect to find only three phases ? Remember , a phase change is a radical alteration of the structure or state of the system created by a relatively small change in the value of relevant system parameters , and the system structure is defined by the value of these parameters ( e . g . at atmospheric pressure , liquid water becomes solid at zero degrees Celsius ). What a potentially fruitful avenue of research !
Proposed Research Framework
Five research directions are proposed :
1 . Search Big Data and social science research archives for opportunities to rigorously extend natural laws into the arena of social systems : What is the meaning for social systems of co-evolution , phase change , ... ? What are the controlling oscillators ? Is it possible to quantify the magnitude and direction of a “ social field ” and any associated “ force ”? What does dimensional analysis tell us ? Can we meaningfully define a “ social Hamiltonian ”?
2 . Build precisely calibrated materials-based models of social systems to test attribute theory .
3 . Conduct further inquiries into the topology of social space : What is the dimensionality of social space ; does each dimension have its own topology , how do these dimensions and topologies combine , if at all ? If networks capture the topology of social space , does that not imply that such space has no independent topology but is completely dependent on frame of reference ? Are there analogs to this in the natural sciences ? Is there a corollary of this that suggests that each interaction has its own topology defined by the network in which the interaction is embedded ?
4 . Examine the dynamics of adjacency : What is the significance of multidimensional adjacency ? Are some adjacencies more important than others ?
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