2014-2015

Serge GALAM
Do humans behave like atoms ? An unfortunate answer from Sociophysics
Serge Galam, Senior researcher at CNRS, member of CEVIPOF, Centre for Political Research,
Sciences Po and CNRS, Paris (serge.galam@sciencespo.fr)
For the first time ever in a social science institution a series of 12 talks will be given introducing
Sociophysics, a new emergent field, which combines concepts and tools from the physics of disorder
to build counter intuitive models aiming at the description of some aspects of social and political
behaviors.
Talks will be provided in English, although with a French accent. All used equations, not too many, not
too complicated, will be explained in details yielding a unique opportunity to learn how physicists deal
with discovering the hidden laws governing inert matter, hoping by a reconstructed analogy for some
breakthrough in our understanding of human behavior.
Indeed, in contrast with social sciences, physics of condensed matter has been successful with
identifying the mechanisms at work among individual entities, which in turn produce a global behavior
from microscopic interactions. Denoted as statistical physics, which has not much to do with statistics,
the field offers an elaborated scheme to describe a large spectrum of physical phenomena, covering
within a single unified frame as different cases as boiling water, the appearance of magnetism, getting
superconductor, the creation of the universe, and many more. All cases undertaking a so called critical
phenomenon, whose universal character makes it tempting to extend its domain of application from
physics to humans in bulk.
Initiated more than 35 years ago, Sociophysics is today a well flourishing field of research at the edge
of the unknown. Yet, mostly confined to physicists all over the world, time has come to confront
Sociophysics to parts of social and political phenomena, requiring the setting up of some common
theoretical background with social scientists in order to eventually create a novel theoretical platform
to tackle the challenging issues facing our today societies.
The seminar will be a unique and experimental place of teaching in which participants will contribute a
good deal to the elaboration of the classes content.
Main reference:
Sociophysics: A Physicist's Modeling of Psycho-political Phenomena
Series: Understanding Complex Systems
Serge Galam
Springer (2012) 439 p., 297 illus., 261 illus. in color
Tentative table of talks:
1) Philosophical and ethical questions connected to THE question Do humans behave like atoms?.
What makes sense and what does not?
2) Words, concepts, equations, theorems, approximations, experiments, statistics, reliability,
conviction and conviction beyond reasonable doubt: overlaps and differences.
Asimov (Foundations), the mathematician and the physicist.

Physics and the physicist. The power of physics (and its weakness) with respect to human behavior.
3) An unusual presentation of the emergence of a new discipline: the contemporary case of
Sociophysics. It has not be a nice and straight forwards path.
Old past, recent past, present and possible future.
4) The magic world of collective phenomena in inert matter.
From boiling water through the appearance of superconductivity and to the eventual victory of the FN
in 2007, the same universal mechanisms are at work.
5) The building up of a democratic dictatorship: from scratches to a powerful machinery.
Explaining the stability and sudden collapse of last century eastern European communist parties from
a radical different perspective.
Predicting the scenario of a FN victory. Explaining the 2002 precedent.
6) From two to three competing parties: the intriguing consequences of a third player.
The unexpected links between the small and the big.
7) From magnetism (in inert matter not at Madame Vilma) to the understanding of group decision
making.
Can Sociophysics become a predictive tool?
8) The fundamental puzzle of the making of public opinion.
The surprising role of doubting and the effect of the collective beliefs.
Rumors, innovations, social behaviors.
9) The unexpected influence of contrarian behavior.
Explaining the votes at fifty/fifty from 2000 Bush / Gore election to 2012 election at UMP presidency.
Associated democratic danger and the need to invent new protocols of political governance.
10) The disturbing impact of stubbornness on the democratic balance of opinion dynamics.
Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: global warming, GMO (OGM), nanotechnologies
and the theory of evolution.
11) Behind the big data, the big set ups.
Controversies: a case study of the last decade abnormal death of bees.
12) Application to finance: behind the market stand humans.

Pour vous inscrire merci denvoyer Serge GALAM (serge.galam@sciencespo.fr) et Alain Besoin
(alain.besoin@sciencespo.fr), avant le 7 janvier 2015, un paragraphe (5/10 lignes) de motivations pour
participer ce sminaire ainsi quun court CV (2 pages maximum), une rponse vous sera donne dans
les meilleurs dlais. Le nombre de participants est limit 20. Ce sminaire est aussi ouvert aux
tudiants de master 1 & 2.

Calendrier et lieu :
1re sance : 13 janvier 2015 de 17h 19h Salle de lEcole doctorale
199 boulevard Saint-Germain 3me tage
(Selon les disponibilits de chacun et en accord avec les participants le sminaire prendra la forme de
sances hebdomadaires ou de journes dtude)
Renseignement : serge.galam@sciencespo.fr