ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author attempts to unifying overview of certain social phenomena-war, arms racing, and revolution-from the perspective of mathematical biology, a field which, ultimately subsume the social sciences. In turn, few mathematical biologists have considered the application of mathematical biology to problems of human society. Although man has engaged in arms racing, warring, and other forms of organized violence for all of recorded history, the authors have comparatively little in the way of formal theory. The author argues that social revolutions and illicit drugs may well spread in a strictly analogous way or-at the very least-that an epidemiological perspective on social processes is promising. The fact that epidemics are threshold phenomena has important implications for public health policy and, the author argues, for social science. Rather, the argument is that macro social behaviors such as war, revolution, arms races, and the spread of drugs may conform well to equations of mathematical biology—ecology and epidemiology in particular.
