QUANTITATIVE SOCIODYNAMICS - SUBJECT, MET HODS, RESULTS AND PERSPECTIVES

During the last years important insights have been gained, e.g. in syn ergetics, concerning systems that consist of a large number of non-lin early interacting subsystems. These have brought about advances in mat hematical sociology and the social sciences. This paper gives a review of recent results of quantitative sociodynamics which is an extension of the theory of interacting populations. In order to be generally in telligible mathematical, formulations are omitted, even though they bu ild the central part of: quantitative sociodynamics. Mathematically in terested readers can find these in the cited literature. The paper rat her focuses on the discussion of the key terms and interrelations of t he concepts that play a role in quantitative sociodynamics. Particular ly important is the self-organization (emergence) of collective behavi or patterns and social structures. In this connection the interrelatio ns with general system theory are pointed out. Quantitative sociodynam ics can be understood as a kind of ''meta theory'' since it provides a general modeling strategy and implies a number of established models from the social sciences as special cases. These include the logistic equation, the gravity model, some diffusion models, the evolutionary g ame theory, the social field theory and decision theoretical concepts. Applications reach from opinion formation, migration-, pedestrian-, s ettling- and voting-behavior to group dynamics and models of evolution ary and nonequilibrium economics.