Describing People as Particles Isn’t Always a Bad Idea - Issue 33: Attraction
▻http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/describing-people-as-particles-isnt-always-a-bad-idea
Infomercialist and pop psychologist Barbara De Angelis puts it this way: “Love is a force more formidable than any other.” Whether you agree with her or not, De Angelis is doing something we do all the time—she is using the language of physics to describe social phenomena. “I was irresistibly attracted to him”; “You can’t force me”; “We recognize the force of public opinion”; “I’m repelled by these policies.” We can’t measure any of these “social forces” in the way that we can measure gravity or magnetic force. But not only has physics-based thinking entered our language, it is also at the heart of many of our most important models of social behavior, from economics to psychology. The question is, do we want it there?Interacting particles: While crowd behavior can often be described using equilibrium (...)