Physicists applying their tools to how humanity can get along is a vision that a growing minority aspire to, a minority, not exclusive to physics who in years to come could be remembered for creating a new politics. This discussion between Physicist Albert-László Barabási and political scientist James Fowler provides an insight into the paradigmatic revolution in the hard and social sciences that is growing in influence. The question perhaps is not whether this will reshape political philosophy but when will it reshape politics and to what extent.

Much has been written about the power of social media and networks, but for those of us interested in complex systems, it has proven to provide some tremendous surprises especially in the physics community who are struck by how different systems ranging from genetics to social networks share similar organising principles. I was also struck by the following quote and wonder how much of the new generation of scientists are actually thinking in this way?

“Suddenly a new generation of physicists, biologists, mathematicians, bioinformaticians, systems biologists – whatever you want to call them – comes along and says, ‘You know, I don’t have a favourite gene. I want to look at all of them simultaneously.’ That is a fundamental change in the view of what really matters in biology, one that not everybody is ready for. It’s creating stress.”

Indeed it is a matter that will no doubt increasingly influence political and scientific debate this century. I imagine that the field of complex systems and science will create the next tectonic shift in intellectual thought, and even the next intellectual giant in science – standing on the shoulders of great scientists who traversed this arduous path to greatness and the advancement of humankind.