Nikolay Amosov - Founder of Biocybernetical Information Technologies | |
Dr. V.S.Olshanikov International Research and Training Center of Information Technologies
and Systems of National Academia of Sciences of the Ukraine |
The "Bible " of the Biocybernetics Department |
Modelling in sociology
N.M.Amosov expressed great interest in interrelations of man with society and in social order. Through modelling he looked for the solutions of problems related to social structure. What are the advantages and disadvantages of capitalism and socialism? What is an "ideal society"? These are the questions N.M. Amosov intended to answer by creating heuristic models.
The method of heuristic modelling lies in creation of a mathematical model of some complex system, using a hypothesis of its structure and functionality. Such a model is, actually, a means of linking the variety of qualitative and quantitative information available from literature into a uniform system. And qualitative information should also be presented in the form of quantitative values.
A heuristic model, in the first place, allows verifying the consistency of the model's hypotheses. This is done by comparison, under various conditions, of model's behaviour and that of the object being modelled, and, if necessary, the hypotheses can be corrected. Secondly, joint research of the object and its model permits purposefully planning experiments (or experimental observations) with the object and form new hypotheses, what leads to a deeper understanding of characteristics of the system.
Existing models of social systems almost exclusively reflect only economical interrelations of social groups and do not take psychology and ideological factors into account. However, a society is a complex, self-organizing system and self-organization roots exactly in people's psychology. N.M.Amosov believed, that incorporating psychological aspects into the model of society would help to understand social tendencies better.
N.M.Amosov proposed to use generalized personality models, reflecting basic characteristics of different social groups, as bearers of man's psychological features in the society model.
In the figure, the functional layout of the generalized personality model is depicted. It shows the relations of feelings, labour efforts and the "reward" for labour. All major psychological features of a personality and society's response actions in the model are expressed by non-linear functions with saturation, where limited human physical capabilities and limited resources of a society are considered. Models' adjustment consisted in balance coordination of labour distribution and movement, and the "reward" together with closing through motives. Ideology influence was set through specially developed scales: labour - reward, labour - fatigability, pretension level (curves "reward - feeling").
Models built by N.M.Amosov and his collaborates - "Socion" (1972), "MAN" (1977) made it possible to research social and psychological aspects of group behaviour, individual and social motivations of labour activity, and to obtain several non-trivial conclusions concerning optimal combination of personality's and society's interests.
