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Topological Methods for Social and Behavioral Systems

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Topological Methods for Social and Behavioral Systems TOPOLOGICAL METHODS FOR SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS John Casti International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria RR-83-3 February 1983 Reprinted from International Journal of General Systems, volume 8, number 4 (1982) INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS Laxenburg, Austria Research Reports, which record research conducted at IIASA, are independently reviewed before publication. However, the views and opinions they express are not necessarily those of the Institute or the National Member Organizations that support it. Reprinted with permission from Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, Inc. Copyright© 1982 by Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, Inc., UK. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder. iii FOREWORD Many of the problems facing societies today emerge from structures that can be thought of as systems combining people and the natural environment with various artifacts of man and his technology. Systems analysis addresses problems emerging from the behav­ ior of such systems. In the early part of its history, systems analysis usually dealt with those systems that to a large extent were dominated by the technical artifacts involved, either of hard­ ware or structure, and made good use of extensions of classical tools, while introducing a few new ones as the problems prompted their invention. However, since the frontiers of systems analysis have shifted more toward systems dominated by social or natural factors, these classical tools have become less appropriate and useful - new ones must be sought if the problems are to be addressed effectively. Thus, as part of its work, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis explores new concepts and tools that can help systems analysis to advance on these cur­ rent frontiers. In this article, the research of which was partially supported by the Institute, John Casti describes two relatively new theories, catastrophe theory and q-analysis, and suggests both how their structures may offer useful insights on social and behavioral systems and how their formulations could potentially offer computational schemes that could support problem solutions. Finally, he outlines an approach that could be taken to develop a theory of surprises for social and behavioral systems. HUGH J. MISER Leader The Craft of Systems Analysis • Int. J. General Systems, 1982, Vol. 8, pp. 187- 210 © Gordon and Breach Science Publishers Inc. OJ08- I 079/82/0804-0187 $06.50/0 Printed in Great Britain TOPOLOGICAL METHODS FOR SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMSt JOHN CASTI Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria. (Receil"ed August 7. 1981) Methods based in algebra and geometry are introduced for the mathematical formulation of problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Specifically, the paper introduces the main concepts of singularity theory, catastrophe theory and q-analysis for the characterization of the global structure of social systems. Applications in urban land developmenl, electric power generation and international conflict are given to illustrate the methodology. The paper concludes with an outline for a general mathematical theory of surprises, together with a program for investigating the systemic property of resilience. INDEX TERMS: Singularity theory, catastrophe theory, resilience, q-analysis. MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN THE a firm, and tackles a large, complex system, such SOCIAL SCIENCES as the national economy, the tools and methods of classical applied mathematics fail to Stimulated by the (partial) successes of their adequately cope with many of the essential cousins in the economics community, social and ingredients of the problem. In short, the tools behavioral scientists have been increasingly developed around the physics-based paradigm of adopting the tools of applied mathematics to classical mechanics and its minor extension into formulate and analyze various models of human engineering, are no longer appropriate for behavior. Especially in the past decade there has capturing the structural aspects of large social been a veritable explosion of papers, books and systems. In the Kuhnian sense, a new paradigm lecture notes advocating the uses of linear has been created, requiring its own blend of programming, graph theory, regression analysis, mathematical concepts and tools. But, what are and Markov chains, to name but a few the distinguishing features of this paradigm which approaches, for the study of such assorted social the mathematics must strive to capture? ills as the criminal justice system, populations One of the central foundations upon which the migration, public health facilities and automobile physics-based theory of modeling rests is the parking space allocations. Interesting surveys of assumption of a basic "law" governing the some of this literature are in Refs. 1- 3. While we relationship between the variables of the problem. do not wish to minimize the importance or Such a law may be something rather elementary relevance of this work in any way, the fact still like Ohm's Law or quite elaborate such as the remains that most of the modeling efforts in the selection rules of quantum mechanics, but the social and behavioral areas leave the essential assumption underlying all modeling practitioners and decision makers with a strong efforts is the existence of such a law. We have feeling of unease and dissatisfaction. The general argued elsewhere4 that in the social and view is that once one steps away from a very behavioral realms there are no such laws, at least localized situation, such as the microeconomy of not in the sense in which the term is used in physics. While the arguments of Ref. 4 do not bear repeating here, it is worth noting that, in tPartial support for this paper was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-ACOl­ our view, the only possibility for freeing the XORA50260. modeling process from an overdependence upon 187 188 J. CASTI laws is to convert the laws into purely "forms" from elementary geometry. Mathematical mathematical axioms. The search for laws is then methods for modeling in the behavioral and replaced by the construction of appropriate social spheres must be capable of explicit mathematical structures. Thus, any mathematical geometric characterization and manipulation of theory of modeling addressed to the social morphogenetic fields if social science modeling is sciences must not rely upon the presence of laws to be made into a scientific discipline. for its utilization. The Cartesian/Newtonian world view, upon A common consequence of the employment of which classical modeling is based, says that a physical law in classical modeling is that the "space" is a priori and that "objects" sit in it. model then refers only to the behavior of the Similarly, this view asserts the existence of some system in some localized spatio-temporal region. "absolute time" to go along with the "absolute For instance, Newton's 2nd law postulates the space". Although the Einsteinian revolution relationship between the force exerted upon a abolished both such absolutes, it did so in a most point particle at a specific moment in time and the peculiar way: by invoking the existence of particle's acceleration at that same instant. The another absolute, the velocity of light in a implicit hope in such a modeling scheme is that vacuum. It is our contention that the social the local information provided by the law can sciences cannot abolish one type of absolutism by somehow be pieced together to provide a global replacing it with another and that a coherent picture of the particle's behavior throughout theory of modeling in these areas will have to space and · time. Such a procedure works appeal to the relational philosophy of Aristotle reasonably well in physics, probably due to the and Leibniz. In this world-view, the concept of fact that all laws of physics can technically be space is developed via the notion of relation expressed in terms of invariants of certain groups between observed objects, i.e. our awareness of of coordinate transformations and it turns out space comes through our awareness of the that these groups have analytic representations. relation between objects. In a similar view, time This fact has the consequence that if we know is then the manifestation of relations between the experimental data in a local spatio-temporal events. The idea of absolute space and time is region, then we can extend it by analytic thus completely absent from the Aristotelian/ continuation to other regions without having to Leibnizian framework, thereby providing the take into account what is happening "at infinity". basis for a holistic rather than reductionistic In short, the analyticity forces a certain "rigidity" theory of modeling. upon the process which seems to be essential for The task that remains is to translate the the existence of a physical law. Needless to say, foregoing desiderata into a specific mathematical in the social sciences the absence of laws casts form which will then supply the needed tools for serious doubt over one's ability to employ the modeling in the social sphere. While this program above sort of local-to-global,
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