In Honor of Professor Serge Galam for His 70th Birthday and Forty Years of Sociophysics

Dear Colleagues,

In 1982, Serge Galam and collaborators published five papers that opened the path to a new field of research that they coined Sociophysics. Sociophysics is basically the use of ideas, methods, and theories from physics to describe social systems. However, it is not about metaphors, nor maps, nor narrations.

After a challenging beginning (see Galam’s testimony paper, Physica A 336, 49-55, 2004), Sociophysics today is a flourishing field of research among physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists. The use of simple behavioral rules, interactions among the simplified agents, complex networks, stochastic models, and other methodologies that are amenable to large computer simulations have already shown a critical capacity to tackle a broad spectrum of social and political issues. The related numerous existing models and approaches developed for complex systems suggest promising outcomes in the near future. Yet, a current challenge in this field is that social systems often lack first principles, conservation properties, and fundamental laws, such as those at the heart of exact sciences.

Current applications of Sociophysics include very diverse topics, from the emergence and spread of extremist opinions and polarization to economic and financial applications, from describing cities to models of crime spread, from modeling terrorism to the spread of radicalism. Those are only examples, and far from a complete list.

Beyond the academic importance of this field, its direct societal impact should not be forgotten. Currently, policymakers face more and more global challenges for which little knowledge is available. Yet, the need for understanding, predicting, and getting prepared for the evolution of our society is crucial. New ideas and investigation methods are much needed. Sociophysics is undoubtedly a vital source of novel insights to tackle those global societal issues.

To celebrate Serge Galam’s 70th birthday and the 40th anniversary of Sociophysics, the journal Physics will hold a Special Issue on Sociophysics and its many applications. As a reminder of the adventuring spirit of the early days of Sociophysics, we are happy to lead this Special Issue in a new emerging young journal. Therefore, we invite the whole community of researchers in this exciting field to contribute to this Special Issue with new and innovative papers.

Dr. André Martins
Dr. Taksu Cheon
Prof. Dr. Xijin Tang
Prof. Dr. Bastien Chopard
Dr. Soumyajyoti Biswas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Physics is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

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