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C00002 00002	SOCIAL SCIENCE IS VERY COMPLICATED
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SOCIAL SCIENCE IS VERY COMPLICATED

	Social science is very important.  Every decade without
a correct and convincing social science is a decade with
a serious risk of nuclear war.  Lesser failures of the
social mechanism do untold harm.

	The main difficulty in creating a social science is
that society is very complicated.  Our purpose in this article
is to discuss ways of treating such complicated phenomena.

	It has been proposed that the complications of society
are like those of a container of gas cwith (say) 10↑23
molecules.  Such a system isn't necessarily complicated -
just very big.  Methods for dealing with the number of
such as statistical mechanics, do not solve the problems
of society.  It is not a problem of the interaction
of many individuals with their neighbors which
is difficult to understand; it is the variety of
groups of people, ideas, and important individual people
all have to be treated as well as the mass phenomena.

	Take as an example the American energy problem.
The following facts and phenomena are all relevant.

.item←0

	#. The technical characteristics of the various forms
energy.  This actually needs subheadings, so we'll list some
of them as separate points.

	#. The association of nuclear energy with bombs.

	#. The anti-nuclear movement as a movement and not
just as a sentiment.

	#. A movement constitutes a claim on power.