Josip Stepanic jr.^1,*, Hrvoje Stefancic², Mislav Stjepan Zebec³ and Kresimir Perackovic³

¹ Department of Quality, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, I. Lucica 5, Zagreb, Croatia
E-mail: josip.j.stepanic@fsb.hr
² Theoretical Physics Division, Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Bijenicka 54, Zagreb, Croatia
E-mail: shrvoje@thphys.irb.hr
³ Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Marulicev trg 19/1, Zagreb, Croatia
E-mail: Mislav.Stjepan.Zebec@ipdi.hr and Kreso.Perackovic@ipdi.hr

Received: 11 February 2000 / Accepted: 14 July 2000 / Published: 28 July 2000

Abstract: Certain statistical aspects of social systems are described by appropriately defined quantities named social potentials. Relations between social potentials are postulated by drawing an analogy with thermodynamics relations between thermodynamic potentials, thus obtaining a toy model of some of the statistical properties of social systems. Within this model, an interpretation of a socially relevant acting (acting as opposed to action, see ref. [1]) that does not invoke structural changes in social systems, is given in terms of social po-tentials.

Keywords: social systems theory; thermodynamics; social potentials; entropy and temperature of social systems.