I've been doing a lot of thinking on this subject, including a few posts here and there over the past few days that some people seem to be affronted by, or to dismiss as gobbledegook.

I started having a look around to see what work is being done, because it seems such an obvious approach, given our understanding of dynamical systems generally.

Well, there's actually a lot of work being done, but you, like me would never have come across it.

Here are a few links

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/eventssummary/event_11-12-2012-13-34-29

"Based on current research, it would appear that a mathematical model for predicting the future behaviour of very large groups, akin to the fictional science psychohistory in Isaac Asimov's books, may not be too far-fetched."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics

"Thermoeconomics is based on the proposition that the role of energy in biological evolution should be defined and understood through the second law of thermodynamics but in terms of such economic criteria as productivity, efficiency, and especially the costs and benefits (or profitability) of the various mechanisms for capturing and utilizing available energy to build biomass and do work.[6][7]"

I am encouraged that serious minds are working on what is not a simple problem.

This was posted this morning, but I think that GY missed it and only put it up a couple of hours ago, so I've bumped it.

I'll also add another link

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5w49c6wt#page-8

That's a free access journal on a field called cliodynamics, which is

"a transdisciplinary area of research integrating historical macrosociology, economic history/cliometrics, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases."

I think these various investigations are going to yield a general set of mathematical relationships that describe and predict human social interactions.

Antiseptic,

Not necessarily on your subject, but you might like to try and hunt down Arthur Koestler's "The Ghost in the Machine".....which speaks of systems and seeks to compare biological systems and social systems (linguistic - many systems) and hierarchy. Also speaks of human adaptation and evolution being the bringing together of things seemingly unrelated to achieve breakthroughs in understanding.

I've quoted a bit from Koestler on this page, so I'll leave it with you as over here in the West it's time to get dinner : )

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14128&page=23

Thanks Poirot, I've read a little of Koestler's stuff, it's interesting.

The main thing, I think, is to try to describe how people and societies are related to each other, with cognisance of individual interactions as being both influenced by and influencing groupings on all scales.

If we can come up with descriptions that are general and not reliant on knowing the particular ideologies or political stances, then we can work on ways to make particular social arrangements that are stable and productive and give everyone a satisfactory role with some confidence that we know what we're doing, instead of playing like a kid with a chemistry set, mostly making bad smells and sludge.

Dear Antiseptic,

I'm not sure if these books will help but
you can check them out for yourself on
Google Book Search:

"The human past: World Prehistory (and) the
Development of human societies." by Christopher Scarre.

"The Complete World of Human Evolution" by
Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews.

Poirot I just had a look at your Koestler discussion linked to above and I must say I found it compelling.

I was silly enough to comment earlier before I checked your link.

I'm noticing more and more ways that things emerge from earlier matrices of knowledge that are obvious when examined, but short-cut the sidesteps that had already been taken.

It's obvious that there has to be some integrated probabilistic model of human interaction. There are only so many ways to be human. We've had an understanding of some forms of dynamical systems for a long time, but we've tried to avoid the idea that we're as predictable en masse as any other large population with quantifiable properties. We hate the idea that our free will can be averaged. But it obviously can, it's just a matter of working out how.

I'll put The Ghost In The Machine on my reading list.