dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaStatistical Dynamics of Religions and Adherents
| Authors | Marcel Ausloos, Filippo Petroni |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0612032 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612032 |
| DOI | 10.1209/0295-5075/77/38002 |
| Journal | Europhys. Lett. 77 (2007) 38002 |
Abstract
Religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of populations. All religions may evolve in their beliefs and adapt to the society developments. A religion is a social variable, like a language or wealth, to be studied like any other organizational parameter. Several questions can be raised, as considered in this study: e.g. (i) from a ``macroscopic'' point of view : How many religions exist at a given time? (ii) from a ``microscopic'' view point: How many adherents belong to one religion? Does the number of adherents increase or not, and how? No need to say that if quantitative answers and mathematical laws are found, agent based models can be imagined to describe such non-equilibrium processes. It is found that empirical laws can be deduced and related to preferential attachment processes, like on evolving network; we propose two different algorithmic models reproducing as well the data. Moreover, a population growth-death equation is shown to be a plausible modeling of evolution dynamics in a continuous time framework. Differences with language dynamic competition is emphasized.
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"abstract": "Religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of populations.\nAll religions may evolve in their beliefs and adapt to the society\ndevelopments. A religion is a social variable, like a language or wealth, to be\nstudied like any other organizational parameter.\n Several questions can be raised, as considered in this study: e.g. (i) from a\n``macroscopic\u0027\u0027 point of view : How many religions exist at a given time? (ii)\nfrom a ``microscopic\u0027\u0027 view point: How many adherents belong to one religion?\nDoes the number of adherents increase or not, and how? No need to say that if\nquantitative answers and mathematical laws are found, agent based models can be\nimagined to describe such non-equilibrium processes.\n It is found that empirical laws can be deduced and related to preferential\nattachment processes, like on evolving network; we propose two different\nalgorithmic models reproducing as well the data. Moreover, a population\ngrowth-death equation is shown to be a plausible modeling of evolution dynamics\nin a continuous time framework. Differences with language dynamic competition\nis emphasized.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0612032",
"authors": [
"Marcel Ausloos",
"Filippo Petroni"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph",
"nlin.AO"
],
"doi": "10.1209/0295-5075/77/38002",
"journal_ref": "Europhys. Lett. 77 (2007) 38002",
"title": "Statistical Dynamics of Religions and Adherents",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612032"
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