This book highlights mathematical ideas to help explain a number of important aspects of the dynamics of social groups. These ideas are similar to those used to describe the behaviour of Lagrangian mechanical systems, and as such this book appeals to anyone wanting to gain an understanding of the intrinsic unity of natural phenomena.

Highlights mathematical ideas to explain a number of important aspects of the dynamics of social groups Discusses the difficulties that social groups and mathematicians face, using examples/stories and characters Uses Arrow's mathematical analysis to describe the important characteristics of a leader

Autorentext
Prof. Francesco dell'Isola is co-author of more than 164 papers (indexed in Scopus). He was editor or co-author of 5 technical books published in Springer Nature, also. He supervised or co-supervised more than 20 Ph.D. students and 10 postdoctoral projects. He gave more than 70 invited lectures in several universities and international conferences and has been Visiting Professor in more than 7 universities (France, USA, and Russia). In 2018, he has been Russell Severance Springer Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in several fields of theoretical mechanics and applied mathematics: the common techniques used are variational principles, as a heuristic tool for formulating mathematical models. In particular, he has studied the possible applications of Lagrangian mechanics methods to social sciences and economy and the present book popularises some of the most important results in this field.

Inhalt

1.A Dictator Must Always Exist.- 2.Arrow's Theorem is a Powerful Tool for Understanding Many Social Phenomena.- 3.Catherine the Great and Genghis Khan: Power has no Gender.- 4.Some Open Problems for a General Mathematical Theory of Social Structures.- 5.Phenomenology of Leadership.- 6.Phenomenology of Dictatorship. <p