Universality and scaling in human and social systems

Abstract

The objective of statistical physics is to understand macroscopic behavior of a many-body system from the interactions of the constituents of that system. When many-body systems reach critical states, simple universal and scaling behaviors appear. In this talk, I first introduce the concepts of universality and scaling in critical physical systems, I then briefly review some examples of universal and scaling behaviors in human and social systems, e.g. universal crossover behavior of stock returns, universality and scaling in the statistical data of literary works, universal trend in the evolution of states or countries etc. Finally, I mention some interesting problems for further studies.