Theory and Simulation
Introduction
The behavior of society is complex. The first step in studying a complex problem is to break it into smaller pieces. We will divide first into components. We follow the TOP Saga introduced by Kenneth Boulding in “Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution,” 1978. He divided society into Things, Organizations, and People. And, Organizations consisted of things, organizations, and people.
We also find that society consists of three overlapping dynamical systems; physical, relationships, and cultural. Each of these follow a difference set of dynamics.
Physical Dynamics
Physical dynamics refers to such things at the movement of things. Things can only be moved so far and so fast. It takes energy to move them. The flow of material into a city and waste back out of a city obey physical dynamical rules. The need and use of energy for industry and for our personal comfort obeys well established laws.
Relationship Dynamics
Through our relationships with Things, Organizations, and People we cooperate for mutual benefit to control the physical part of our society. Or, we fight to take control of the TOP elements of society. In “Knowing and Guessing”, Satoshi Watanabe constructs an Interdependence Analysis (IDA). From his work it is possible to define a relationship distance between elements of a society. With definition of a relationship distance one can construct a set of global parameters characterizing the overall behavior of societal relationships. Mathematically they look like a relationship temperature and a relationship pressure. Most importantly it becomes possible to set boundaries as to how fast a society can alter it’s relationships to respond to events.
Cultural Dynamics
The knowledge to know how to organize and how to control the physical dynamics is a part of the cultural dynamics. Cultures evolve. It is this evolutionary dynamics that makes human activity difficult to predict. In his book, “The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins defines a “meme” as the component in cultural evolution analogous to the gene in biological evolution. We find it necessary to extend Dawkins’ meme concept. To form an evolutionary system a meme must replicate and participate in a selection process. This occurs only in the human brain. When in a human brain, we will call it a mimeme, where it replicates and evolves. This evolutionary process is described by the John Holland’s “Genetic Algorithm.” Outside the human brain a mimeme becomes a meme, where it participants in an extensive communications network.
The Matrix
In a very real sense we can view the entire system as a four layer matrix.
Naming the foundation upon which our civilization is built as “The Matrix” comes from Dr. Jerry Waters.
More Detail
A paper providing detail on the theory of society and its simulation will be found in the Documents section of this web site.