Social systems and human behaviour.
Developing new sociological concepts. (Médialab, Sciences Po, Paris) A naive approach of social systems by physicists would be to start with interacting “social atoms” to probe collective phenomena, “emerging” from the microscopic level. However, for social systems, isolated (“atomic”) individuals do not exist. Therefore we argue that it is more interesting to use “collecting” entities instead of individual and collective levels, and develop this idea through the use of heterogeneous networks.
Scientometrics. This approach is tested on scientometric data (scientific articles). Mapping of scientific institutions was developed [599], for instance for ENSL and CNRS. The interdisciplinary practices of 600 laboratories were studied through their publications. Scientometrics is also useful to study scientific fields, for instance the “complex systems” domain, showing that it does not arise from a single universal theory, but from shared computational methods and concepts on self-organization. A study carried out on 7000 CNRS scientists regarding their public engagement activities, was propagated with a Special Issue in Public Understanding of Science.
Model for conference submission behavior. An empirical study of several datasets has revealed some ‘universal’ features in the temporal process of electronic submissions to conferences, leading to the proposition of a simple predictive model.
Collective Free Improvisation offers a situation of human interactions without any a priori reference frame. For musical production process, a model and studio experiments were done to gain a better understanding of emerging collective structures.