Paradigm Shifts in Phys Rev Letters - Egyptian Collapse of The State

The analysis below also applies to geopolitics. See Asimov's "The Second Foundation."

"For intermediate or large innovation rates, the takeover is a chaotic process with multiple new states competing on short time scale. The final takeover is on a much shorter time scale than the decline."

Large innovation rate from Internet Facebook, Twitter et-al.

"The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology (analogous to mathematical physics). Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy, which has a population of quadrillions of humans, inhabiting millions of star systems). The larger the number, the more predictable is the future." Wickedpedia


PRL 106, 058701 (2011)
PHYSICAL    REVIEW    LETTERS
Emergence and Decline of Scientific Paradigms
S. Bornholdt,1 M. H. Jensen,2 and K. Sneppen2
week ending 4 FEBRUARY 2011
1Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bremen, D-28359 Bremen, Germany 2Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark (Received 21 March 2010; published 2 February 2011)

"Human history contains a number of epochs, each dominated by certain themes. Themes are often centered around scientific ideas, which each become so dominating on a large scale that nearly everybody is affected and influenced by their prevalence in the ongoing human communication and thinking [1]. In science these themes are often centered around single words or concepts, with recent examples such as, nano, climate change, chaos, string theory, systems biology, and high-TC superconductivity. These phenomena have a real basis—but also include a large social factor associated with people communicating with each other. Typical for such phenomena is a relatively sharp initiation, a rapid growth up to near-global awareness level, followed by a slow decline where the ability to sustain interest is weakened by new ideas. Sometimes, scientific concepts even escape the scientific community to the global public, and become common themes that influence the frame for future cultural development. Examples of the latter include nanotechnology and the concept of climate change.
...

In the real world there are predefined subcommunities that
often are hierarchically organized: there is the community
at large; there is science; there is the subdiscipline physics,
which again is subdivided into high energy physics, solid
state physics, astrophysics, biophysics, etc. Each of these
communities is again subdivided, making it possible to
spread one particular idea to dominate a subcommunity
completely without having any noticeable impact on the
remaining world. Examples are high TC superconductivity,
which had large impact in the solid state community, but
essentially none outside that field. On the other hand, a
subject like global warming has effects on a global scale.
Overall our model provides a new frame for understanding
the interplay between dominance of prevailing concepts
supported by a large number of followers, and the
striking inability of these concepts to defend themselves
against new ideas when the situation is prone to takeover.
The increased vulnerability of a dominating idea or paradigm
with age is in our model seen in the steady increase in
the number of competing ideas, and a parallel decrease in
its support. For intermediate or large innovation rates, the
takeover is a chaotic process with multiple new states
competing on short time scale. The final takeover is on a
much shorter time scale than the decline. Existing paradigms
are eroded in a preparadigm phase for the next
paradigm (as perhaps visible at present for the paradigm
of global warming) much as envisioned by Kuhn [1]. The
new paradigms are born fast, ideally aggregating in a real
scientific competition between the many random ideas that
emerge in the preparadigm phase.
This work was supported by the Danish National
Research Foundation through the Center for Models of
Life.
[1] T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962), 1st ed..
[2] P. Clifford and A. Sudbury, Biometrika 60, 581 (1973).
[3] T. M. Liggett, Interacting Particle Systems (Springer-
Verlag, New York, 1985).
[4] C. Castellano, S. Fortunato, and V. Loreto, Rev. Mod.
Phys. 81, 591 (2009).
[5] M. Rosvall and K. Sneppen, Phys. Rev. E 79, 026111
(2009).
[6] K. Sznajd-Weron and J. Sznajd, Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 11,
1157 (2000).
[7] D. Stauffer, A.O. Sousa, and S. Moss de Oliveira, Int. J.
Mod. Phys. C 11, 1239 (2000).
[8] D. Stauffer, Comput. Phys. Commun. 146, 93 (2002).
[9] P. L. Krapivsky and S. Redner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 238701
(2003).
[10] C. M. Bordogna and E.V. Albano, J. Phys. Condens.
Matter 19, 065144 (2007).
[11] H. Spencer, The Principles of Psychology (Longman,
London, 1855)."
[