***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Very nice communication by Otto - about saints, sin, and Socnet … I would like to add a few more challenges ? more discussion on the heterogeneity of these networks, the diversity of actors’ attributes, the impact of context on actor’s attributes and on the structure itself (including institutional context and media framing) … Reductionism exists in all field of science, and reducing behavioural choices and relationships to ‘yes’ and ‘no’; like /dislike … leaves the door wide-open to physicists, mathematicians … there are some excellent simulations of complex behavioural systems of ‘traffic’ agents, investors, business actors and others - that make decisions and strategic choices resulting in congestions, agglomerations, point-to-point connectivity, resource flows, transaction chains … So what are the territorial boundaries of Socnet and what is the meaning of these boundaries… :) Dr. Emanuela Todeva Senior Lecturer in Strategy and International Business BCNED - Business Clusters, Networks and Economic Development http://www.surrey.ac.uk/bcned Surrey Business School - 64MS03 University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU27XH, UK e-mail: [log in to unmask] tel: +44(0)1483 68 2056 View my research at: http://ssrn.com/author=1124332 梦 雪 -----Original Message----- From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Otto Koppius Sent: 15 June 2013 19:12 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: xkcd's take ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** Barry/Nick reminded us of XKCD's take on the physics takeover (http://xkcd.com/793/), but as a (former) graph theorist I couldn't help thinking of this one as well: http://xkcd.com/435/ :) Cheers, Otto PS On a slightly more serious note, and as much as I am in the Socnet-camp in this debate, I find the physics-bashing that occurs on Socnet every now and then just as off-putting as physicists' ignorance of other fields. Setting aside the fact that many social network researchers are probably no saints either when it comes to acknowledging other disciplines (there are exceptions of course, just like there are with physicists), it blinds people from seeing many useful advances that *are* being made in physics (and computer science for that matter). Models of citation networks and co-authorship networks have increased our understanding of the sociology of science, the many advances in community detection algorithms can be used for the study of groups, physicists have developed useful models of human mobility and crowd dynamics etc. etc. etc. There *is* a lot of good stuff out there. -- Dr.ir. Otto Koppius Dept. of Decision and Information Sciences (T9-08) Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University PO Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam The Netherlands T: +31(0)10.408.2250 F: +31(0).10.408.9010 E: [log in to unmask] Disclaimer ________________________________ De informatie verzonden in dit e-mail bericht inclusief de bijlage(n) is vertrouwelijk en is uitsluitend bestemd voor de geadresseerde van dit bericht. Lees verder: www.eur.nl/email-disclaimer <http://www.eur.nl/email-disclaimer> The information in this e-mail message is confidential and may be legally privileged. Read more: www.eur.nl/english/email-disclaimer<http://www.eur.nl/english/email-disclaimer> ________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.