Book Review: The Social Atom

As we know, social problem is intricate so that in most circumstances we cannot accurately predict what will happen in human society if something changes or goes wrong. Many sociologists thought that we cannot unravel the mystery of social phenomena by the same way of explaining the physical world, because there is a great difference between people and a physical atom. In comparison with a physical atom, individual person has his/her own unique and elaborate personality, background, and experiences. Thus, it is difficult to understand how individual makes a decision in various situations, let alone to predict the collective behaviors in daily life of human beings. Nevertheless, the book The Social Atom seeks to persuade us that the social phenomena may not be as complicated as we thought before, if we study the pattern of self-organization as physics but not individual complexity. The author, Mark Buchanan, of this book is a physicist and science writer, and he was formerly the editor of Nature which is a scientifically acclaimed international journal of science. However, the book The Social Atom is sort of a popular science book, which is written in an easy to read non-academic style and assumes no prior knowledge of either physics or social science.

       In the beginning of the book, Buchanan said that when people think about physics, they think about quantum theory, Newton’s three laws of motion, Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, black holes and so on. However, physics has moved a way beyond that. Modern physics has also branched out into another topic of interest. Not only did physicists concern with the fundamental equations, but they were keen to know how organization can emerge by itself. For example, they studied why the same water molecules can turn to solid when they are put into the freezer, and why they can change into vapor when boiled. Another question physicist was inquisitive to understand is why the same carbon atoms make up both diamond and graphite. In short, the answer of above questions is that a new and totally different material can emerge just by putting the same atoms together in a different pattern. In other words, the vital key for us to understand is the pattern of self-organization but not atoms themselves. From the same point of view, Buchanan claims that social science is like physics, pattern matters more than individual. And the complex social outcomes can result from potentially simple rules of individual behavior. That means we can explain and even predict a wide variety of human behaviors by using the observations akin to physics. What is more, he creates a new term called “Social Physics” for this approach.

       Buchanan then gives far-reaching examples to show that regardless of people thinking of ourselves as self-determined individuals making up their own mind, they usually behave instinctively and act strongly rely on others around us. One of interesting example is that when you observe carefully the crowd on the street, either those who are shopping or just flooding out of a stadium after a big baseball game, you may find some intangible structure of the crowd. In the first place, everyone goes in different directions so that the crowd movements look like somewhat chaotic. In the meantime, some people begin to follow another in an effort to avoid collisions, and they gradually form narrow streams of movement. In the streams everyone moves in the same direction and flows along with one another. Furthermore, as more people join such streams, there is a greater pull on others to join the flow. This kind of herding behavior is not intended or planned by anyone, but the emerging pattern, the pedestrian stream, is somehow improvisatory and self-organizing. The motivation of the individual is simple, following with others in order to readily avoid colliding with the rest of the crowd, but the outcome is a complex collective behavior pattern. The idea is that we human being, just as social atoms, work by simple rules in the most daily life situations. If we learn more similar patterns in our social life at different levels, we will be able to anticipate social phenomena accurately.

       Another compelling example given by Buchanan in the book is the well-known neighborhood segregation model in social science. In the US, spatial separation of the races is a long-standing phenomenon; white people and black people are often living in different communities. Most people think intuitively the cause is racism. But Thomas Schelling, awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, showed us racial segregation could be just another collective pattern similar with the streams in a crowd but not related to racism. In 1971, Schelling designed a board game with dimes and pennies which stand for two races of people. At first he premises that no one is racist, but they are reasonably tolerant of diversity and only move when they find themselves in a clear minority group within their neighborhood. More specifically, they follow a rule like “If fewer than 30% of my neighbors belong to my race, then I will move.” The simulation game starts with a well-integrated community, and two races of people are mixed together randomly. In each run, every individual checks their surrounding and decides to move or stay by using the simple rule. After a short time, every individual stops moving and keeps a stable status. They surprisingly end up dividing themselves into sharply segregated group livings, even though the outcome is not intended by any individual. It is very counterintuitive and the link between individual attitudes and collective outcome is not straightforward. Buchanan said: “This is the power of pattern over people, and you can easily get an outcome that absolutely no one desires or intended… Next time you see racial segregation you can’t conclude that is racial discrimination.”

       The work of Schelling unveils the fact that micro-motives lead to surprising macro-behavior, and enlighten many scientific fields. Recently, several physicists, computer scientists and social scientists have used computer simulation models to study patterns by regarding people as social atoms and endowing them with simple rules to interact with each other. The works include simulating human trails, traffic jams, panic behavior of pedestrians, riot situations, market crushes and bubbles, and social epidemics. They show that the thought with respect to our human society has been changing. Human behavior could be often simpler than what we think; to understand the human world better, we need to think of patterns, not just people. At any rate, if you would like to understand this new trend in social science, the book The Social Atom is definitely the best book for your reference.