“From theories of pedestrian movement and traffic flow to voting processes, economic
markets and war, researchers are striving towards a physics of society”“‘It may be’, said US sociologist George Lundberg in 1939, ‘that
the next great developments in the social sciences will come not from professed
social scientists, but from people trained in other fields.’ Take a look at
any issue of a physical-sciences journal in the past five years and you will see
one such field staking its claim vigorously. Physics is muscling its way into social
science. Not content with explaining the behaviour of atoms and electrons, semiconductors,
sand and space-time, physicists are now setting out to understand the behaviour
of people.”
It seems to me that the surest way to invite dystopia is to seek utopia. Witness
communism, eugenics, and other vain efforts to make the world perfect through logic
and reason.