№ 6 - 2001
Sergeyev V.M.
How Are Social Changes Possible? (Prolegomena to a Statistical Theory of Social Networks)

The author cogently reasons to the effect that the analysis of social phenomena in many cases cannot nowadays be accomplished soundly enough unless with resort to methods of natural and exact sciences. Thus, it is analogue computation that makes it possible to prognosticate changes in mass behaviour, emergence of ethno-national conflicts, migration processes and so on. It is long since the thermodynamics approach has been employed in economics, but good use of the approach, as V.M.Sergeyev presumes, can well be extended to social studies as a whole. In the author’s opinion, social sciences are now one of the most promising spheres of application of the numerous methods and models that have been worked out by mathematics and theoretical physics for a century past.