Physics of Community Course Notes for Fall 2015

This book is the result of about 25 years of extensive notes, reading, deriving, calculating, and discussing. I provide a new and rigorous way to analyze collective decisions, from a Chemical Engineering perspective. The perspective follows from – but differs from – the models of von Neumann or Shannon, revealing assumptions and offering new possibilities. It leads to the following ansatz: Human decisions can be treated mathematically as sets of chemical reactions of metaphorical molecules – that is, “decision reactions” involving “knowlecules” – within a broader framework of information flows and separations in networks and dialogical processes represented by process flow diagrams. Concepts like Gibbsian games, decision reactions, perception functions, entropic choices, and pain potentials permeate the pages of this book, and if experimental data support the model, a key benefit is that we can draw on many already-existing sciences, including physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology. This book aims to be practical, providing measurement methods and equations that can be coded. My long term aim is to grow justice, equity, creativity, and dignity for people all around the world.