Worldlines and social networks

László Jenkovszky
Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev
03143 Ukraine

ARTICLE HISTORY
Compiled June 19, 2020

ABSTRACT
Familiar laws of physics are applied to human relations, modelled by their world
lines (worldlines, WLs) combined with social networks. We focus upon the simplest,
basic element of any society: a married couple, stable due to the dynamic balance
between attraction and repulsion. By building worldlines/worldsheets, we arrive at
a two-level coordinate systems: one describing the behaviour of a string-like binary
system (here, a married couple), the other one, external, corresponding to the mo-
tion of this couple in the medium. The approach is illustrated by simple examples
(semi-quantitative toy models) of worldlines/sheets, open to further extension, per-
fections and generalization. World lines (WL) are combined with social networks
(SN). Our innovation is in the application of basic physical laws, attraction and
repulsion to human behaviour. Simple examples with empirical inputs taken from
intuition and/or observation are appended.

KEYWORDS
Worldline, string, brane, social network, attraction, repulsion

1. Introduction

The behaviour of individuals or groups of people analysed by means of mathematical

physics, appended by empirical data (observation) is attracting researcers working in
various fields of natural sciences: mathematics, biology, sociology, economy etc., see e.g.
Buchanan (2007); Barabasi (2002); Lovasz (1986); Galam (2003); Perc (2016, 2013). A
branch related to sociology is called social physics or sociophysics Kulakowski (2007);
Putnam (2001). It investigates various phenomena by analogy with astronomical, phys-
ical, chemical, and physiological phenomena. Social physics refers also to using big data
analysis and the mathematical laws to understand collective effects of human crowds.
The basic idea is that data about human activity contain mathematical patterns that
are characteristic of social interactions as well.
The application of methods of mathematical physics in chemistry, biology, physiol-
ogy, sociology and related subjects is not new. In the present paper we try to advance
further by including innermost motivations of human behaviour and/or groups of per-
sons.
I adhere to the philosophical principal of dualism by which life is based on balance
between two competing components, ”good” (love, interest, sympathy, empathy etc.)

CONTACT A. N. Author. Email: [email protected]

and ”bad” (disgust, hate, antipathy, evil etc.). Alternatives to dualism are monism, by
which only a singly category exists, or pluralism, implying a multitude of categories
in nature. We chose dualism (Sec. 6) for its universality, simplicity and affinity to the
basic laws of physics.
The idea that mental and bodily events are coordinated, without causal interac-
tion between them is known as philosophical parallelism. It assumes correlation of
mental and bodily events, but denies any direct causal relation between mind and
body. Accordingly, mental and bodily phenomena are independent yet inseparable.
Psychophysical parallelism Chisholm (1911) is a third possible alternative regarding
the relation between mind and body, between interaction (e.g., dualism) and one-sided
action (e.g., materialism, epiphenomenalism). It is a theory related to dualism suggest-
ing that although there is a correlation between mental and physical events there is no
causal connection. The definition of and relation between body and soul is a delicate
issue, not easy to fix rigorously or unambiguously.
In any case, I believe that part of the universe, namely its materialistic component
may be conceived or, at least approached by means of mathematical physics, while
the other one, spiritual belongs to theology. I do not enter that area, instead try to
approach the interface region between the two by using general and flexible physical
laws and models of interaction. These models are based on attraction and repulsion
with free parameters adjusted to empirical data, intuition and guesses suggested by
great artworks. By the latter I mean the treasury of world art, accumulated in works
of philosophers, artists, writers, poets and musicians. Great artists were able to unveil
the past and intuitively reveal the future.
A typical problem in specifing the border and transition region between matter
and spirit is in understanding emotions (feelings). Physiologists attempted to find
the origin and nature of feeling in experimants with animals. Popular are discussions
on pleasure centres in animals and human beings. Brain stimulation reward (BSR),
discovered by James Olds and Peter Milner Olds (1954) is a pleasurable phenomenon
generated by stimulation of specific brain regions. Profound observations of anlimals’
internal world (ethology) and mysterious telepathe phenomena can be found in Refs.
Lorenz (1949a,b).
Human souls are battlefields between body (physiology) and spirit (divine), subject
of literature masterpeaces such as L. Tolstoy’s ”Father Sergius” Tolstoy (1889). I will
not penetrate the ”other side”, instead I try to model the behaviour of human beings
based on observations, literature, intuition and common sense. I try to demonstrate
that human relations may follow simple laws of attraction and repulsion appended by
observations (empiric).
At this point it is appropriate to cite Emmanuel Kant Kant (1781): ”Two things
fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and
steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within
me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or
extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect
them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”
The aim of the present paper is animation of world lines and social networks. By
”animation” I mean inspiration, i.e. endowing familiar mechanical, statistical or mathe-
matical constructions (world lines and social networks) with footprints of spirit, absent
from machines but present in human behaviour.
The paper is organized as follows: in Sec. 2 we introduce World lines, to be com-
bined with networks in Sec. 3. In Sec. 4 I overview various binary systems and their
interrelation, with Sec. 4.1, preparing the ground for the central part of the paper,

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Figure 1. World lines and branes: from the WL of a point-like object (leftmost), via a two-dimensional sheet
(propagating rubber band, i.e. a string) to a multi-dimensional brane.

Sec. 6 modelling the dynamics of particular binary systems, namely those of married
couples.

2. Worldlines

Worldlines (WL) Oleve (2008), called also time-space geography are three-dimensional
plots in which two dimensions are spatial (we use flat, Euclidean space), the third
coordinate being time.
The existence of the fourth, time dimension, apart from those spacial was intuited,
well before Lorentz, Poincaré and Minkovski by great Greeks, followed by Spinoza,
Kant, I. Newton and, last but not least, Herbert Wells in his Time Mashine. Less
familiar, moreover unkonwn, are the related ideas of the Russian philosopher Ak-
sionov, available in Refs. Aksionov (1918); Malykin (2020). When Newton formulated
his theory of gravity, he assumed time to be linear, with unchangeable rate of flow.
He assumed space to the absolute, unchanging, and Euclidean: the divine sensorium
Barrow (2020).
Time geography or time-space geography is an interdisciplinary merge of spatial
and temporal events. Time geography is a framework and visual language in which
space and time are basic dimensions to analyse dynamic processes. Time geography
was originally developed by geographers, but now it is used in various fields including
anthropology, environmental science etc. Since the 1980s, time geography is used also
by researchers in biological and social sciences, and in interdisciplinary fields.
Benjamin Bach with his colleagues Bach (2014) have generalized the space-time
cube towards a framework for temporal data visualization applicable to all data that
can be represented in two spacial dimensions plus time.
Worldlines are perfect tools to illustrate biographies Jenkovszky (2019); Gamow
(1979). Constructing and drawing worldlines of know persons, based on documents
and/or (auto)biographies, combined with their genealogical lines is an amusing and
useful exercise.
A historical example with simplified (straightened) worldines (WL) of four actors
(EBGL) is shown in Fig. 4, Ref. Jenkovszky (2019).

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Figure 2. Worldlines (WL). Leftmost is a dimensionless line; crossing lines (next to the right) may or may
not interact. The rightmost object, emerging from the merge of two structureless lines has finite dimensions;
it is called a strip (rubber band), tube or brane.

Figure 3. Worldlines appended by elements of a ”marriage network” (right margin, to be expanded in Sec.
5). Such worldlines may evolve also in genealogical graphs, alluded to at the bottom and top of the present
figure.

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Figure 4. Straightened WLs of Euclid, János Bolyai, F. Gauß and N.I. Lobachevski. Three genii who discov-
ered the new, non-Euclidean world, living on the same continent, nearly at the same time, never met Jenkovszky
(2019).

Worldlines (time geography) may be useful to visualise events or, ex-

tended/appended by social networks, in analysing data (e.g. in history) and in making
predictions (e.g. in sociology) by extrapolation.
WLs themselves offer an infinity of options and applications, e.g. by replacing lines
with extended objects - strips, sheets, bands, tubes, branes. (NB: A brane is a physical
object that generalizes the notion of a point particle to higher dimensions.). 2) increas-
ing the number of lines/tubes, including continuum (merge of WLs). With the advent
of computational and storage capacities, infinitely large manifolds of WLs, coming
close and interacting multiply, evolving towards a continuous, three-dimensional bulk
of world history, parametrized by relevant computer codes may be realized in the near
future.
A particular extension of world lines are the phase- and configuration spaces. In
classical mechanics, phase space is the space of all possible states of a system. Remind
that the state of a mechanical system is determined by the position p and momenta q
of its constituents, where p and q predict the further evolution of the system at any
time, provided the laws governing the motion of these objects are known.
In configuration space, the parameters that define the configuration of the system
are called generalized coordinates and the vector space defined by these coordinates is
called configuration space. For example, the position of a single particle moving in ordi-
nary Euclidean three-dimensional space is defined as q = (x, y, z) and its configuration
space is R3 . A particle may be constrained to move within a specified manifold. For
example, if the particle is constrained by a rigid bond, free to swing about the origin,
it is constrained to lie on a sphere. For n disconnected, non-interacting point-like par-
ticles, the configuration space is R3n . A word of warning: in life sciences/sociophysics,
mechanical momentum should be replaced by a relevant variable.
In this sense, the predictive power of the phase- or configuration spaces is the same

5
as that of a world line, but it is a convenient and powerful technical tool, especially in
the case of a large number of objects. The formalism of the phase- and configuration
spaces offers huge perspectives in social science studies, provided we know the laws
governing human beings or societies. A priory we do not. In the present paper I try
to guess and model these laws and regularities, to be verified empirically.
Worldlines and social networks are different. While WLs evolve in time along certain
trajectories, as shown e.g. in Figs. 1–4, networks are static. Time dependence, and
more details, such as the ”price” of a vertex etc., may be introduced in networks.
If so, the time dependence becomes hierarchic: ”internal” within the network and
”external” along the WL, as in Sec. 6 and Fig. 10, obeying statistics and topology.
Still, they have some common features. With genealogy trees included, WLs acquires
many features of a social network (mind the arrow of time!), hence one may look for
a particular duality by interchanging time (vertical orientation) and the (horizontal)
spacial coordinate (”interaction range”), remembering however of the uniqueness of
the time arrow.
In perspective, worldlines may play an important role in descriptive history. By
this I mean a detailed panoramic view of the evolution of mankind including WLs of
individuals and groups, societies etc., as well as their interaction/intersection at various
levels and forms. The realization of such a huge ”bank of world lines” technically was
incredible in the past, but now, with the advent of huge computation and storage
capacities, it may be realized!
In the present paper I consider WLs of married couples – building blocks of any soci-
eties. This will be useful when generalized to more complex systems, their interaction,
collective effects etc., all that now realizable.

3. Worldlines and networks, arrow of time

Networks Gurney (1997); König (1990); Barthélemy (2010) are studied and used in
mathematics, computer science, geography and other fields of science. Random net-
works were proposed by Erdős and Rényi Rényi (1959) at the end of 1950s. The interest
was renewed and reinforced after the discovery by Albert and Barabási Barabasi (2002)
of strong heterogeneities.

Figure 5. Simplest, primitive net: a binary system (see Sec.6).

Network science studies also complex networks such as telecommunication networks,

computer networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social
networks, considering distinct elements or actors represented by nodes (vertices) and
the connections between the elements as links (edges), see e.g. Barthélemy (2010)
and references therein. The field exploits graph theory from mathematics, statistical
mechanics from physics, data mining and information visualization from computer
science, and social structure from sociology. Dénes König König (1990) was among
the pioneers. Probabilistic theory in network science was developed in Paul Erdős and
Alfréd Rényi’s papers on random graphs Rényi (1959).
Albert-László Barabási and Réka Albert Barabasi (2002) developed the scale-free

6
network which is a loosely defined network topology that contains hub vertices with
many connections, that grow in a way to maintain a constant ratio in the number of the
connections versus all other nodes. Network models serve as a tool in understanding
interactions within empirical complex networks.
The Erdős - Rényi model Rényi (1959) is used for generating random graphs in which
edges are set between nodes with equal probabilities. It can be used in the probabilistic
method to prove the existence of graphs satisfying various properties. The Barabási -
Albert model (BA) Barabasi (2002) is a random network model used to demonstrate
a preferential attachment or a ”rich-get-richer” effect (see also Buchanan (2007)).
A successful social network model is that of Galams’ Galam (2003). Their work
focuses on the dynamics of group decision making and how minority opinions can
influence public opinion.
Bipolarity (e.g. Western ”democracy” vs. Eastern ”administrative command sys-
tem”) has a parallel with the title of the present paper: while networks correspond to
democracy, worldlines are hierarchic. Funding of science is an example: centralized,
vertical hierarchic funding, typical of the ex-Soviet Union is opposite to the horizontal
system of grants, based on unbiased pear referees system (network!), provided it is
free of corruption and conflict (coincidence, correlation) of interests.
Networks are widely used in estimating citation indices, that became important
in scientometrix in deciding about the financial support of a researcher, group or
institution. A citation network is a kind of social network that can be represented as
a direct graph with nodes representing papers P1, , Pn and edges e(Pi, Pj) between
two nodes Pi and Pj denoting a co-citation relationship Perc (2016), when the paper
Pi cites a paper Pj. The number of citations of scientific articles is becoming one of
the most important measures of scientific impact and quality. Hence, the authors are
trying to obtain as many citations as possible for their works by creating corrupted
citation cartels, where members cite each other in order to increase their own number
of citations.
Besides the structure of interactions within the networks, of interest is also the
interaction between networks. This aspect was studied in Ref. Perc (2013) and papers
quoted therein.
As repeatedly emphasized, we combine ascending (arrow of time!) WLs with hori-
zontal networks. Symmetries with respect to space, P , time, T and charge conjugation,
C and their combinations play an important role in the microworld. In a fantastic sce-
nario, such symmetries my be used in sociophysics as well. A simple example of such
synthesis is shown in Fig. 3, where the horizontal lines (marriage) on the right margin
are hinted. They will be discussed in more details in Sec. 5, referring to Hall’s marriage
theorem.
Music is a symbiosis of horizontal networks and vertical world lines (evolution with
time): while harmony (key, chord, orchestration) is horizontal, melody and rhythm
correspond to vertical evolution along the time arrow. The merge of the two produces
symphony. Plastic art, painting, architecture, photo art are ”frozen music”.

4. Binary systems (dyads, dipoles, biparticle graphs)

In this Section I specify the notion of binary systems. They may imply individuals,
families, companies, countries, nations,... Binary systems form the basis of further
generalizations to ”many-body” systems, big numbers, collective phenomena, etc.
With dynamical equilibrium in mind, I rely on models of binary interactions known

7
in physics. In the microworld (e.g. in the ”standard theory” of basic, i.e. electro-week
and strong interactions), stable are systems formed by two elementary constituents of
opposite charge, as in the hydrogen atom, made of an electron and a proton or in a
meson, made of a quark and antiquark. Quarks are bound by strings forming dipoles
in mesons or triangles (or ”Mercedes” stars) in baryons. Different is gravitation where
all massive objects attract, no ”antigravity”!
The emergence and evolution of the coupling in a binary system is an essential
ingredient in our analysis. It depends on many factors: internal motivation, external
influence and many more. Three types of motivations may induce two-body correla-
tions:

• Confounding. A motivation for correlation between actions of adjacent agents

in a social network is external influence from elements in the environment. Math-
ematically, this means that there is a confounding variable X, and both the net-
work G and the set of active individuals W come from distributions correlated
with X. This is in contrast with the influence model, defined below.
• Influence. An obvious explanation for social correlation is social influence.
Mathematically, this can be modelled as follows: first, the graph G is drawn
according to some distribution. Then, in each of the time steps 1, ..., T , each
non-active agent decides whether to become active. The probability of becoming
active for each agent u is a function p(x) of the number x of other agents v that
have an edge to u and are already active.
• Homophily. The third and the most obvious tendency of individuals to choose
partners is based on similarity of characteristics (homophily, see Sec. 7). It leads
to correlation between the actions of adjacent nodes in a social network. Math-
ematically, the set W of active nodes is first selected according to some distri-
bution, and then the graph G is picked from a distribution that depends on
W.

4.1. Measuring social correlations

Social correlation is a well-known phenomenon. Formally, this means that for two
nodes u and v that are adjacent in G, the events that u becomes active is correlated
with v becoming active. There are three primary explanations for this phenomenon:
homophily, the environment (or confounding factors), and social influence. A logistic
function with the logarithm of the number of friends as the explanatory variable pro-
vides a good fit for the probability. Therefore, one uses the logistic function with this
variable, that is, one estimates the probability p(a) of activation for an agent with a
already-active partner as follows:

eα ln(a+1)+β
p(a) = , (1)
1 + eα ln(a+1)+β

where α and β are parameters. The parameter α measures social correlation: a large
value of α indicates a large degree of correlation.

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5. Supply and demand; optimal pairing

Optimization of marriages is a popular exercises in network theory, especially that

”marriage” may imply variants. Huge literature exists on the subject, see e.g. Knuth
(1996); Barabási (2011); Hall (1935); Dilworth (1950) and earlier references therein.
A popular model is based on the so-called Hall’s marriage theorem Hall (1935)
resulting from the combinatorics that specifies distinct elements to be chosen from
overlapping finite sets of elements. It is equivalent to several theorems in combinatorics,
including that of Dilworth Dilworth (1950). The name comes from an application to
matchmaking, given a list of potential matches among an equal number of brides and
grooms. The theorem gives a necessary and sufficient condition on the list for everyone
to be married to an optimal match. Also, this is an example of the efficiency of the
social networks.

5.1. Application to marriage, business partners, etc.

Suppose there is a certain number of women and men wanting to get married to
someone of the opposite sex. Suppose that the women each have a list of the men they
would like to marry, and that every man would like to marry any woman who is happy
to marry him, and that each person can only have one spouse.
The best known mathematical result is Hall’s marriage theorem Hall (1935). It says
that men and womenfolk can all be paired iff the following marriage condition holds:
if in any group of women, the total number of men who are acceptable to at least one
of the women in the group is greater than or equal to the size of the group.
It is clear that this condition is a necessary one. Hall’s marriage theorem says that
it is also sufficient.
This is a wide and popular subject, related to different areas of life, not only marriage
but also employment, business, education, social relations. It is also a typical market
problem of optimizing supply and demand. Below we illustrate the problem by a
simple example of optimizing the employment of four students in four universities.
The procedure may be applied in many areas, including marriage, of course.
Let us have four post-doc candidates, call them Peter, Paul, Juan and Maria, aspir-
ing to best universities, and assume there are four prominent universities, say those of
Padova, Heidelberg, Oxford and Kiev, opening exactly the same number of post-doc
positions/scholarships, one position in each. The students are not of equal capacity.
The universities obviously want the best among the students, while the students do
not care too much about the choice.
In Fig. 6 a biparticle graph, the students are on the top and the universities are at
the bottom. A student and a university are connected if the university wants to have
that student. For example, Kiev will invite any student, so it is connected with all four
applicants, as shown in Fig. 6, left panel.
Hall’s theorem suggests the following optimal matching: suppose F is a biparticle
graph (A, B). There is matching covering A iff for every subset X ⊆ A, N ((X) ≥ |X|,
where N (X) is the number of neighbours of X.
Let us illustrate Hall’s condition in the following way: for a set of n universities
denote by m the number of students that at least one of these universities want to
have. If m > n for every list of universities, than a matching is possible. Otherwise it
is not.
In Fig. 6, middle panel highlights two universities (Padova and Oxford), but only

9
 Figure 6. Visualising Hall’s ”marriage theorem” (demand vs. supply).

one student, Juan is wanted by either one. Thus, since 1 < 2, the matching fails. A so-
lution: suppose Padova University’s Council will invite Pietro instead. Then matching
is successful and every student gets a position.
Generally speaking, the number of students and positions does not need to be
equal. If, for example, there are 10 students and 4 positions, and one wishes to fill
every position, one can still use Hall’s theorem, however in this case not every student
will be granted a position.
As argued by Barabási Barabasi (2002), this problem has much in common with
matching optimally the supply and demand. For example, it works when there is a
certain number of aspirants applying for a position at a company (university etc.) and
that company (university etc.) has a finite number of vacancies to be filled by best
aspirants, see also Ref. Knuth (1996).
In what follows we will be interested in the relations a couple of opposite sex. NB:
In general, ”sex” refers to the biological differences between males and females, such
as the genitalia and genetic differences. ”Gender” is more difficult to define, but it
can refer to the role of a male or female in society, known as a gender role, or an
individual’s concept of themselves, or gender identity.

6. Conjugal life

In this Section I investigate the creation and evolution of a family, a married couple –
nucleus of any society.
Marriage is usually preceded by a period of ”pairing”, i.e. search for the optimal
partner, see Sec. 5.
I consider several scenarios illustrating conjugal life (many more are credible!). The
dynamics V (r, t) of the couples’ life will be shown as function of two variables – time
t and distance r between the actors, as well as in a 3-dimensional plot, embedding a
2-dimensional curved worldsurface (strip).
In the following Subsection we apply the successful model of inter-particle inter-
actions known in high-energy physics, based on the so-called Cornell potential Quigg
(1977). In Subsection 6.1 we use several empirical functions to model the conjugal
life. Many more options are possible, e.g. those attached to milestones in couples’ life,
taken from the treasury of world art and literature, see Appendix B (Marriage quotes,
aphorisms).

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6.1. Toy model
In physics, the interaction between two charged particles, e.g. quarks, gluons is well
described by the so-called Cornell potential Quigg (1977), balancing between attraction
at large distances r and repulsion at short distances:

V (r) = ar − b/r, (2)

where a and b are parameters. I apply this model to a married couple, extending it by
introducing time dependence in a and b, different for the partners, a → am (t) + af (t)
and b → bm (t)+bf (t). Also, I add a ”background” term c(t) accounting for any external
influence. Thus, the potential becomes

V (r, t) = [(am (t) + af (t)]r − [(bm (t) + bf (t)]/r + c(t). (3)

Figure 7. Conjugal relations following the ”Cornell” potential Eq. (3) with time-independent (for the mo-
ment) parameters a and b.

The interaction between individuals, similar to physics, is a function of the internal

(inherent) properties of the individuals and their interrelation, both depending on time
and relative distance.
To be specific, below I concentrate on the basic binary systems, that formed by
a male and female. My choice is motivated by: 1) the importance of the family as
the basic cell in any society, 2) similarity with the physical world: attraction between
opposite (electric or magnetic) ”charges” and repulsion between like charges.
The above model is only an approximation to reality: manifestation of masculine or
feminine characters, respectively by men and womenfolk is not as unique as for elec-
tric/magnetic charges. Even within traditional sexual relations, men may be endowed
with feminine features and vice versa. By this I mean psychology, not physiology (bi-
ology). (I avoid the delicate and disgusting subject of ”erroneous” inborn gender and
its correction (”repair”) by surgical intervention, popular in certain media). I mean
something simple and obvious: opposite characters attract compensating something
they are short of; usually we avoid/reject what we dislike in ourselves, or we miss, or
are short of. Passive males usually chose an active female and v.v.. This ”compensation
mechanism” in human relations was subject of numerous studies, see e.g. Weininger

11
Figure 8. Simple (and optimistic) trends in conjugal relations; the ”Cornell model” closely follows logarithmic
rise. Such a monotonic behaviour may be perturbed by small oscillations as in the ”Swedish family” of a 1973
TV miniseries written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, starring Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. Their
matrimony is a sequence of attraction and repulsion caused by a mixture of common intellectual interests, sex,
frustration etc., that may be described by a sinusoid as in Figs. 8 and 9 (right), depending both on distance r
and time t. Pessimistic scenarios, i.e. those with degrading or interrupted/ruined relations are not considered
here.

(1920).
The variety of tempers of the individuals (encoded in a and b) may be modelled by
replacing their sum with

A = λa + (1 − λ)b, (4)

where λ is a measure of masculinity (or, symmetrically, feminity), varying between 0

and 1. This formula accounts for complementarity, important in balancing attraction
and repulsion, assuming that a and b correspond to opposite (or at least different)
tempers (see Weininger (1920)). As noted, a balanced couple is that where the partners
compensates the shortage/excess of their inborn qualities (egoism-altruism, openness-
insularity, optimism-pessimism, practicality-dreaminess, etc.). The equilibrium may
be regulated by the parameter λ in Eq. 4. Available literature (see Appendix, Sec.
7), folklore and daily observations offers innumerable examples of binary relations as
functions of time and space.
Figs. 8 – 10 illustrate scenarious of a couple’s life. Note an interesting phenomenon,
known in particle physics (microword), and related to repulsive forces at small dis-
tances r known as fall to the center or ultraviolate divergence. The problem was ex-
tensively studied in relativistic quantum field theory, and cured by renormalization
technique Bogolubov (1952). A popular review can be found e.g. in Ref. Kosyakov
(2001). In a similar way, two persons (here a married couple), lean towards each other
up to a certain distance corresponding to V (s) = 0 in Fig. 8. This is understand-
able: each human being has his own innermost ”privacy territory”, closed to external
intervention. This limit is ”case-dependent”, but it necessarily exists! Violated, i.e.
penetrated by an outsider (intruder), the core/sole may be damaged and the individ-
ual may loose his/her ego. This is similar to the materialistic microword: a particle
looses its identity if an external agent penetrates the barrier of critical repulsion, see
Ref. Kosyakov (2001).

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 0
-1.0

-0.8
r t

-0.6 5

-0.4

-0.2
10

10

0
V

-5

-10

Figure 9. Two-dimensional plots of Figs. 7 and 8 are generalized to 3D by introducing, apart from distance,
also time dependence of the parameters a → a(t) b → b(t) and c → c(t). NB: The right-hand icon shows also
mild oscillations with time (cf. Fig. 8).

6.2. Units and scales

In moving from the material (”body”) to the spiritual (”soul”) world, we are fac-
ing the delicate problem of units, indispensable in natural sciences. Without going
into details, let me only mention three options: classification of quantitative notions,
comparative ones and quantitative, called also metric (contrary to the previous two,
defined as ”topological”). Let us try to be ”metric” as far a possible, relying on the
dominant logical, causal rather than chaotic behaviour of people. Causality implies
that any effect is preceded (caused) by its cause. On the other hand, any physical ac-
tion, including mechanical motion to large extent is induced by emotions, motivation.
In other words, a measurable action, in some non-trivial way may be related/reduced
to or derived from accompanying emotions. The toy model of Subsection 6.1 is an
attempt to do so: translate (”materialize”) feeling by using a familiar coordinate sys-
tem. The linear dependence on r may be replaced by more complicated functions, but
the above ”Cornell” form is a convenient way to demonstrate the idea. By choosing
a, b, r, t as variables, we must define their dimensions as well as that of the ”po-
tential” V (a, b, r, t). While the dimensions of r (distance) and t (time) are obvious,
(e.g. meters and seconds), the intensity of the ”feelings”, a and b, are to be defined.
A new unit may be introduced. In choosing the scale one may follow the definition
of temperature, scaled to boiling and freezing points. For example, set 100 degrees as
the upper (”boiling”) value of V (r, t) (marriage) and 0 as the ”freezing” point, e.g. as-
sociated with separation (divorce etc). Actually, it is common to characterize feelings
using ”thermal” vocabulary, ranging from frozen relations (0 degrees), though cold,
cool, worm, hot relations, arriving to boil (blow up) at 100 degrees.

7. Conclusions, perspectives and open questions

In this paper I attempted the almost impossible: to combine irrational/indeterministic

human behaviour with rational/deterministic laws of physics. The conclusion of this
study are manifold. On the one hand, reproducing world lines of known people ex-
tended by relevant social network and genealogy, given the huge amount of ”data” in

13
Figure 10. Rescaled surfaces (bands, strips) of Fig. 9 embedded in an external coordinate system (x, y, t),
live there string-like, its elements (a married couple, labelled with m and f ), interacting continuously sweeping
a world-sheet (brane) in the external 3-dimensional space-time (cf. Figs. 2 and 3). This is a simplified case
aimed to illustrate the idea.

the literature, is more than just amusing entertainment: it is instructive and useful not
only for history but also as a check of the method presented in this paper, to evolve
towards practical applications and useful predictions.
Interesting is the next step involving multiply interacting networks fitted to more
than two actors. In any case, understanding binary systems is indispensable to progress
towards more complex collective systems including possible critical phenomena, with-
phase transitions in social systems. Van der Waals forces and the relevant equation,
similarly to binary systems discussed in Sec. 6 are based on attraction and repulsion be-
tween the constituents, offering many possibilities of their application in sociophysics.
Simple semi-quantitative examples in that Section (Figs. 7–10) are meant merely to
illustrate the basic ideas.
Promising are studies of an increasing number of worldlines/tubes, including con-
tinuum (merge of WLs). With the advent of computational and storage capacities,
infinitely large manifolds of WLs, coming close and interacting multiply, evolving to-
wards a continuous 3-dimensional bulk of world history, parametrized numerically of
by phenomenological models. Modern computing and storage capacities offer perspec-
tives to handle the interaction of large numbers of encoded world sheets.
In studying the behaviour of a large number of individuals one faces two kinds of
hierarchic systems: totally hierarchic (vertical, as in a WL) and completely democratic
(horizontal networks) systems The real world is a mixtures of two.
The above-mentioned bipolarity (Western ”democracy” vs. Eastern ”administrative
command system”, or, in short: ”totalitarianism”) has a parallel with the title of the

14
present paper: while networks correspond to democracy, worldlines are hierarchic.
In perspectives, worldlines may play an important role in descriptive history. By
this we mean detailed panoramic view of the evolution of the society, including WLs
of individuals and groups, societies etc., as well as their interaction/intersection at
various levels and forms.
The fate of an ethnic/linguistic minorities in alien environment may be modelled
by a drop of oil in water. Chances for its survival/assimilation (by solution) depends
on its homogeneity and surface tension of the drop and aggression of the medium,
the surrounding liquid. The theory of percolation may mimic contacts and flow across
borders.

Ackowledgements

I thank A. Zhokhin for numerous discussions and Yu. Shtanov for useful remarks.

Appenix A. Types and dimensions of homophily

• Baseline vs.inbreeding. One distinguishes between baseline homophily and

inbreeding homophily. The former is the amount of homophily that would be
expected by chance given an existing uneven distribution of people with varying
characteristics, and the second is the amount of homophily over and above the
expected value McPherson (2001).
• Status vs. value. Different are the status homophily and value homophily:
individuals with similar social status characteristics are more likely to associate
with each other than by chance. ”Status” includes both ascribed characteristics
like race, ethnicity, sex, and age. In contrast, value homophily involves association
with others who think in similar ways.
• Race and ethnicity. Social networks may be affected by race and ethnic-
ity, which account for the greatest proportion of inbreeding homophily. Smaller
groups have lower diversity simply due to the number of members, and this tends
to give racial and ethnic minority groups a higher baseline homophily.
• Sex/gender. As to sex and gender, baseline homophily of networks is relatively
low compared to race and ethnicity. Men and women frequently live together,
and are both large and equally-sized populations.
• Age. Most age homophily is of the baseline type. For example, the larger age
gap someone had, the smaller chances that they were confided by others with
lower ages.
• Religion. Homophily based on religion is due to both baseline homophily and
inbreeding.
• Education, occupation and social class. Parents account for considerable
baseline homophily with respect to education, occupation, and social class.

Appendix B. Marriage quotes, aphorisms

Literature and folklore offer an inexhaustible source to guide empirical world lines,
see Sec. 6.1. Below is a short selection of aphorisms. Many more were collected and
commented by Leo Tolstoy, see Tolstoy (1956).

15
 Françoise Sagan:
All marriages are successful. Difficulties begin when living together begins.
Leo Tolstoy, ”War and piece”:
Les mariages se font dans les cieux (Die Ehen werden im Himmel geschlossen);
Leo Tolstoy, ”Anna Karenina”:
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.
Maria Ebner von Eschenbach (1830-1916:
Marriages are made in heaven, but they do not care that they are successful.
I. Kuprin:
Separation for love is the same as the wind for fire: it extinguishes a small love, and
inflates a large one even more).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nitzshce:
If the couple did not live together, successful marriages would occur more often.
Folklore:
https://ru.citaty.net/tsitaty/452612-mariia-fon-ebner-eshenbakh-braki-
sovershaiutsia-na-nebesakh-no-tam-ne-zabotiatsia/
Out of sight, out of mind (Aus den Augen aus dem Sinn).
Far from eye, far from heart.
It’s one step from love to hatred.

Appendix C. Simple Wolfram Mathematica codes

. For readers’ convenience, easement below we quote several simple Wolfram Mathe-
matica codes used in Subsec. 6.1, Figs. 7–10. The toy models are intended merely to
illustrate the idea, opening the way to more sophisticated applications.
Cornell Conjugal:
a1 = a2 = 1; b1 = b2 = 1; al1 = a1/t; al2 = a2/t; bl1 = b1; t; bl2 = b2*t; cl = 0;
{{ Plot3D[{-(al1 + al2)/r + (bl1 + bl2) r + cl}, {r, -0.1, -1} , {t, 0.1, 10}, AxesLabel
World sheet; hierarchic coordinates:
a1 = a2 = 1; b1 = b2 = 1; al1 = a1/t; al2 = a2/t; bl1 = b1; t; bl2 = b2*t; cl = 0;
{{Plot3D[{-(al1 + al2)/r + (bl1 + bl2) r + cl}, {r, -0.1, -1} , {t, 0.1, 10}, AxesLabel
Cornell3D.6
a1 = a2 = 1; b1 = b2 = 1; al1 = a1*t; al2 = a2; bl1 = b1; bl2 =
b2/t^(0.1); cl = 0;{{Plot3D[{-0.1 (al1 + al2) r + 10 (bl1 + bl2)/r + cl}, {r, 2, 5} , {

a1 = a2 = 1; b1 = b2 = 1; al1 = a1*t; al2 = a2*Sin[3 t]; bl1 =

b1*t; bl2 = b2/t; cl = 0;
{ { Plot3D[{-(al1 + 2 al2)/(r + 1) + 0.5 (bl1 + bl2) r + cl}, {r, 1, 10} , {t, 1, 5}, B
AxesLabel -> {"r", "t", "v"}]};
c = 0; a = 1; b = 1; f1 = a*r; f2 = -b/r; f3 =
f1 + f2 + c; Plot[{f1, f2, f3}, {r, 0, 5},
PlotLegends -> "Expressions"]

16
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