Mathematical Theory of Human Relations

Abstract

IT is only in quite recent times that mathematical methods have been applied in the social sciences or, indeed, in those fields, such as psychology, where the natural and the social sciences overlap. The use of mathematical-statistical methods in the handling of data, as in biometrics or econometrics, has developed rapidly in recent years. The employment of mathematics as a tool of analysis in the development of theory has been neither as general nor as successful, Mathematical economics, like mathematical biology, is taking its place in the general body of theory, and the time is ripe for extensions into other social sciences. What the author of this book attempts is a sketch of the possibilities of a mathematical sociology. He is where the mathematical economist or biologist was some decades ago, experimenting with alternative formulations and various types of simplification. He has a wider and more difficult field than the economist or biologist but ; since his science overlaps with theirs, he can draw upon their experience.

Mathematical Theory of Human Relations

An Approach to a Mathematical Biology of Social Phenomena. By N. Rashevsky. (Mathematical Biophysics Monograph Series, No. 2.) Pp. xiv + 202. (Bloomington, Indiana : Principia Press, 1947.) 4 dollars.