I heard someone talking about explaining human history with something similar to an equilibrium in chemistry. Does anyone know of what he might have been talking about or any other attempts to find mathematical laws for history?
well, the conservation of energy always applies and I'd say this: the human mind can be thought of as a system of energy and there is always a path of least mental resistance subjectively. Iif you take the anthropological approach to history and apply the path of least mental resistance to the people at any given point in history, and then what they did after that based on where they were then expand that same reasoning to cultures - history seems pretty reasonable. I suppose you have to kind of take into account the distributions of intellects at any given time too, like that there existed at certain times, certain individuals whose path of least resistance differed significantly from the typical individual of the time period and situation. I'm so full of shit. I swear it seems reasonable when I'm thinking it. It's just kind complicated and hard to communicate since it is almost entirely likely that you don't have the same conception of language as I and vice versa. that may not be what you were talking about, but that's my take on the whole deal. hehe, a dangerous combination of a bunch of different scientific concepts. yeah baby!
some related opinion (just kind of background of my perspective on brains) The human mind seeks to find context in which to place its stimulus. That is to say, the mind is perpetually trying to cram stuff into a schema of concepts you've created which only exists within your particular brain. Additionally, and this is experimentally verified by some guy I saw on the science channel: The brain provides/fabricates said context when it cannot make sense of things otherwise. (on a funky note: the path of least resistence regarding thought is exactly to let your brain do its thing, otherwise you have to exert the effort of thought at some or many levels) The human mind, being aware of itself, cannot help but to ponder its creation hence "why is everything so X?" and/or "why am I here?" blah blah etc. The brain attempts to employ its only real tool "thinking" (which may resemble reason if the person is actually mature and uninfected by a meme) to provide "reasonable" (e.g. "whatever will trip that particular brain's trigger to make the answer seem reasonable") explanations such that it can be filed per the prior bullet.
Yeah I guess I do know. Ever since the early 1990s Dynamical Systems Theory (DST)* has become increasingly popular in different fiels of science. DST is related to chaos theory, which has been so popular in the 1980s. After biology, movement sciences, economics, cognitive psychology, more and more "less exact" sciences are interpreted by DST. I know language has, and I personally once wanted to do reasech in art and easthetics (but could not get a research grant). Apparently now human historyis viewed as a dynamic process between parts (groups/states/peoples). Not very strange, but how does one model such a thing? * Dynamical Systems Theory is about (complex) non-linear coupled dynamical equations. It describes such things as gait changes in horses, growh patterns in fish, bird migration, etc.
