A theory of social imitation
E Callen, D Shapero - Physics Today, 1974 - link.aip.org
Abstract
Buridan, the French religious philosopher, is credited (probably falsely) with describing an ass standing midway between two identical bales of hay: Being French, and therefore cool and logical, the ass starved to death, because there was no way to decide which bale to eat first. Only philosophical asses behave in that way. Animals, like magnets, break symmetry, especially animals in groups. We shall discuss some examples of such antisymmetric behavior and see whether it can be described quantitatively, similarly to the way we describe magnetism. ©1974 American Institute of Physics